Why Aren’t My Images Loading in wpDataTables?

If your images aren’t showing up in wpDataTables, it’s likely due to how your source file formats the image links.

For example, if you created hyperlinks in Excel or Google Sheets, those won’t work with wpDataTables. Spreadsheet software uses a visual formatting layer for hyperlinks that doesn’t carry over to the HTML output. wpDataTables can only render images from direct URLs or valid HTML.

Supported methods for displaying images in wpDataTables:

1. Use the “Image” column type

If your Excel contains direct image URLs, you can use the Image column type in wpDataTables to display them.

If you'd like to show a thumbnail that opens a larger image on click, use the following format in the cell:

http://yourdomain.com/thumb.jpg||http://yourdomain.com/fullsize.jpg

• The part before || is used as the thumbnail

• The part after || is used as the full-size image when clicked

If the || is not found, the full cell content will be used as the image URL.

Learn more here:
https://wpdatatables.com/documentation/column-features/image-columns

2. Use custom HTML with <img> tags

You can also insert full HTML <img> tags directly in your Excel or CSV cells, and set the column type to String in wpDataTables.

Example:

<img src="https://yourdomain.com/image.jpg" alt="image description" width="500" height="600">

This method gives you complete control over how images appear, but you’ll need to manually write the full HTML for each image.