How to skip lines in a dynamic table block

You will learn

Learn how to skip rows (e.g., items) in a dynamic table block. The most common use case for this is hiding irrelevant items, like shipping insurance or free gift items, from an abandoned cart email. However, you can follow these steps for any email that uses a dynamic table block.

Before you begin

This article covers how to hide items from existing dynamic table blocks. If you have not yet created a working dynamic table block (e.g., the products in an abandoned cart or order confirmation email), learn how to create one from scratch or start with a message in our flow library.

These steps require the HTML option under Cell content in your dynamic table block.

If your email is part of a flow, set it to Draft or Manual before editing so messages don’t send automatically while you make changes.

Write your if statements

Create 2 code snippets using a text or code editor (somewhere you can copy and paste the snippets from later): 1 for the product image and 1 for the product details. Each code snippet will consist of 3 parts:

1. An opening if tag, {% if ... %}, indicating which items should appear in your table block.
2. Content, like an image tag or text about the product.
3. A closing tag, {% endif %}.

Create the opening if tag

Here are some examples of opening if tags:

The examples use item as the Row alias. Replace it if your table uses a different alias. The price example compares against the number 0; if your data stores prices as text, compare against the exact text value instead, such as {% if item.price != "0.00" %}.

Create the content for the if statement

For content, follow these steps to use the existing content from your dynamic table block. Write this code snippet in a code or text editor; you’ll add it to your template in the next section.

1. Select the image cell in your table block. Under Cell content, click Replace to view the image placeholder.

2. Copy the entire code from the Dynamic variable or dynamic URL field. Note that this may be a simple dynamic variable, or it may be a longer code snippet; copy all of it, regardless of length. Then close the image picker.

3. Replace the placeholder in this code snippet with the code you copied from the Dynamic variable or dynamic URL field.
   

<img src="PLACEHOLDER" style="width: 200px; height: auto;" width="200">

This example uses a width of 200 px. To keep your existing image settings, use its Max width, add its Alt text in an alt attribute, and wrap the image in an <a href="..."> tag using its Link address.

If your existing table block has a simple dynamic variable for the image, the resulting content will look something like this:

<img src="{{item.product.variant.images.0.src}}" style="width: 200px; height: auto;" width="200">  

If your existing table block contains a longer code snippet, the resulting content might look like this:

<img src="{% if item.product.variant.images.0.src %}{{item.product.variant.images.0.src}}{%else%}{{item.product.images.0.src|missing_product_image}}{%endif%}" style="width: 200px; height: auto;" width="200">

Add your ending tag

Then, put all the content together: your opening if statement, then your content, and finally a closing {% endif %} tag.

Repeat for the text content

Create the second code snippet from the product-details cell:

1. Open the product-details text cell. If a dialog offers Convert to HTML block, select it and continue to step 3. Otherwise, select and copy all of the content in the inline text editor.
2. Under Cell content, select HTML. Paste the content you copied into the code editor, replacing any existing content. If prompted, choose Paste as HTML.
3. Copy the resulting HTML into your second snippet in the text or code editor. Wrap it in the same opening if tag and closing {% endif %} tag you used for the image snippet.

For example, the 2 snippets can look like this for Shopify Started Checkout data. Use the variables and links from your own table:

And here’s a breakdown of those code snippets:

Once you’ve written both code snippets, continue in the template editor following the steps below.

Skip rows in a dynamic table block

1. Select the image cell in your existing dynamic table. Under Cell content, select HTML.

2. Copy the product image code snippet you created in the previous section and paste it into the code editor, replacing any existing content.

3. Select the product-details cell, which you set to HTML in the previous section.
4. Copy the product-details code snippet you created in the previous section and paste it into the code editor, replacing all previous content.
5. Preview the email to ensure it appears as expected: the skipped item should not appear, but all other items will appear normally. Make sure to preview with an event that contains the item you’re trying to hide, so you can ensure it is hidden. Also preview an event containing only items you want to hide to check how the rest of the email looks.
6. When you’re finished, wait for your changes to finish saving and exit the email editor. If you changed a live flow email to Draft or Manual, return to the flow and set that email back to Live when you’re ready to resume automatic sending.

These conditions hide the contents of each cell. Empty-row spacing or borders may still appear, so check the layout in your preview.

Conditional statements and the inline text editor

In a text cell, template tags can appear as editable logic instead of raw code. Select the logic to edit it, then click Save. In the HTML cells used above, edit the tags directly in the code editor.

This applies to these template tags:

• {% for ... %}
• {% endfor %}
• {% if ... %}
• {% elif ... %}
• {% else %}
• {% endif %}
• {% with ... %}
• {% endwith %}

Troubleshooting

No items appear in the preview

1. Make sure you are previewing with an event that matches the data source you used (e.g., Started checkout for an abandoned cart message).
2. In the table’s Styles tab, confirm that Row collection and Row alias exactly match the settings from the original block.

The item that should be skipped is still appearing

Check that both cells use the same if statement and that it surrounds all of the content you want to hide. Check its spelling, capitalization, row alias, and data type against your event data. Learn more about conditional logic in templates.

Outcome

After following these steps, any items that don’t meet the criteria in your if statement will not appear in messages like abandoned cart or order confirmation emails.

Additional resources