Title: Alphabet Search
Author: Tobias Bäthge
Published: December 1, 2022
Last modified: May 12, 2025

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Show alphabet buttons above the table to filter rows by their first letter!

# Alphabet Search

Often, it’s interesting to quickly navigate a table alphabetically by the first 
letter of a column.

## Feature description

This feature adds a clickable alphabet above the table, which can be used for faster
alphabetic filtering. Letters for which there are search results are shown in a 
different color than those which don’t have search results. When hovering the letters,
the visitor will also see the number of corresponding search results. Clicking on
a letter will then only show those rows where the configured column starts with 
the clicked letter.

Here is an example:

  |  Last Name | First Name | Company | ZIP code |  
   |  Banks | Travis | Apple | 64655 |  
 |  Cain | Lawrence | IBM | 98004 |  
 |  Middleton | Dennis | Google | 80913 |  
 |  Valenzuela | Lunea | Cisco | 51606 |  
 |  Burgess | Quynn | Mozilla | 78965 |  
 |  Lott | Lillith | Dell | 88178 |  
 |  Freeman | Cheyenne | LG | 14711 |  
 |  Houston | Jorden | Adobe | 96036 |  
 |  Harris | Merritt | Apple | 25178 |  
 |  Gregory | Brynn | Adobe | 91558 |

You can choose between showing the “Latin” or the “Greek” alphabet, as well as whether
letters and/or numbers should be shown. For letters, it’s then also possible to 
choose if uppercase and lowercase letters should be shown separately.

[Use this feature with a TablePress Premium plan today](https://tablepress.org/pricing/?output_format=md)

## Usage instructions

To use these features with your tables, activate the “Alphabet Search” feature module
on the “Modules” screen of TablePress Pro or TablePress Max. Then, configure the
desired options in the “Alphabet Search” section on the table’s “Edit” screen.

![Screenshot of the "Alphabet Search" configuration section in the TablePress Premium
versions.](https://tablepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/datatables-alphabetsearch.png)

The “Alphabet Search” configuration section in the TablePress Premium versions.

## Configuration parameters

To configure this module’s features, you can also use these [configuration parameters](https://tablepress.org/faq/configuration-parameter-reference/)
in the “TablePress Table” [block](https://tablepress.org/faq/documentation-tablepress-table-block/),
the Elementor widget, or in the [Shortcode](https://tablepress.org/faq/documentation-shortcode-table/)
that you are using to embed the table:

  |  Module | Slug |  | Configuration parameter | Name | Description | Type | Default value |  
   |  Alphabet Search | datatables-alphabetsearch |  | datatables_alphabetsearch | Alphabet Search | Whether to show an alphabet for filtering the table by a chosen column’s first character. | boolean (`true` or `false`) | `false` |  
 |  Alphabet Search | datatables-alphabetsearch |  | datatables_alphabetsearch_column | Alphabet Search Column | Column for which an alphabet for searching should be shown. | string | `1` |  
 |  Alphabet Search | datatables-alphabetsearch |  | datatables_alphabetsearch_alphabet | Alphabet Search Alphabet | Which alphabet to use (Latin alphabet (A-Z) or Greek alphabet (Α-Ω)) | enum (`latin` or `greek`) | `latin` |  
 |  Alphabet Search | datatables-alphabetsearch |  | datatables_alphabetsearch_numbers | Alphabet Search Numbers | Whether to show numbers in the alphabet. | boolean (`true` or `false`) | `false` |  
 |  Alphabet Search | datatables-alphabetsearch |  | datatables_alphabetsearch_letters | Alphabet Search Letters | Whether to show letters/characters in the alphabet. | boolean (`true` or `false`) | `true` |  
 |  Alphabet Search | datatables-alphabetsearch |  | datatables_alphabetsearch_case_sensitive | Alphabet Search Case-sensitivity | Whether to treat upper and lower case letters separately. | boolean (`true` or `false`) | `false` |

The “Alphabet Search” feature module is part of the [**TablePress Premium plans**](https://tablepress.org/pricing/?output_format=md).

**On this page**

 1. [Feature description](https://tablepress.org/modules/datatables-alphabetsearch/#feature-description)
 2. [Usage instructions](https://tablepress.org/modules/datatables-alphabetsearch/#instructions)
 3. [Configuration parameters](https://tablepress.org/modules/datatables-alphabetsearch/#configuration)