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The most common thing you’ll do in phpMyAdmin is open a table and look at the data. Maybe edit a row, maybe filter to find a specific record. Everything starts from the Browse tab.

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The layout

phpMyAdmin browse view with database tree and rows
AreaWhat it shows
Left treeAll your databases. Click to expand into tables.
Top tabsBrowse, Structure, SQL, Search, Insert, Export, Import, Operations.
Main paneWhatever the active tab is showing. On Browse, that’s the rows.
Below the rowsPagination controls and per-page row count.

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Open a table

1

Pick the database from the left tree

Click the database name to expand it. The tables inside appear underneath, indented.
2

Click the table name

The Browse tab opens by default and shows the first 25 rows.
3

Page through the rows

Use the arrows below the table or change the page size. Setting Show: to 100 or 500 is faster than clicking through pages when you’re scanning.

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Edit a row in place

1

Click the pencil icon on the row's left edge

The row opens in an inline edit form with one field per column.
2

Change values

For text columns, type the new value. For dates, the field accepts MySQL date format (2026-04-27 14:30:00). For NULL, click the Null checkbox.
3

Click Go

The row updates. The SQL it just ran is shown above the result, so you can see exactly what happened.
To edit several rows at once, check the boxes on the left and click With selected: Edit. phpMyAdmin opens all of them in one form.

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Filter rows without writing SQL

The Browse tab has a small Filter rows box at the top. Type a value and it filters case-insensitively across all visible columns. Useful for quick lookups. For anything more structured, use the Search tab. It lets you build per-column conditions through dropdowns.
Search tab with per-column filters
For complex joins or aggregates, switch to the SQL tab. That’s what it’s for.

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Sort by a column

Click the column header. First click is ascending, second is descending, third removes the sort. The arrow next to the header shows the direction. To sort by multiple columns at once, hold Shift and click each header in priority order.

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Delete rows

Deletes are permanent. Take a backup of the table first via Export → Custom → Add DROP TABLE if it’s anything important.
To delete one row, click the red X icon at the row’s left edge and confirm. To delete several rows, check the boxes on the left and click With selected: Delete. To delete everything in the table without deleting the table itself, go to the Operations tab and click Empty the table (TRUNCATE). This is faster than DELETE FROM ... for large tables.

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