Thanks Michael!

That solution works great! I followed the discussion that followed in that
thread and have adopted the following solution in my config for now.

# http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/106497/focus=106683

| / | <#> |    | <r> |
|   | 1n  | 2y |  3y |
# Exports to ASCII as
# 2y  3y

| / | <r> | <#> |    |
|   |  1y | 2n  | 3y |
# Exports to ASCII as
# 1y  3y

| /  | <r> | <#> |
| 1y |  2y | 3n  |
# Exports to ASCII as
# 1y  2y

| / | <#> | <#> | <r> | <#> | <#> | <#> |
|   | 1n  | 2n  |  3y | 4n  | 5n  | 6n  |
# Exports to ASCII as
# 3y

| / | <r> | <l> | <r> | <l> | <r> | <l> |
| / | <#> | <#> | <#> |     | <#> | <#> |
|   |  1n | 2n  |  3n | 4y  |  5n | 6n  |
# Exports to ASCII as
# 4y

# Same result with a less useful notation:
| / | <r> | <l> | <r> | <l> | <r> | <l> |
| / | <#> | <#> |     |     | <#> | <#> |
| / |     | <#> | <#> |     |     |     |
|   |  1n | 2n  |  3n | 4y  |  5n | 6n  |
# Exports to ASCII as
# 4y

# Deletion must not get trapped with this:
| / | <r> | <l> | <r> | <l> | <r> | <l> |
| / |     |     |     |     |     |     |
|   | <#> | <#> | <#> |     |     |     |
|   |  1y | 2y  |  3y | 4y  |  5y | 6y  |
# Exports to ASCII as
# <#>  <#>  <#>
#  1y  2y    3y  4y  5y  6y


* COMMENT
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(defun mbrand/org-export-delete-commented-cols (back-end)
  "Delete columns $2 to $> marked as `<#>' on a row with `/' in $1.
If you want a non-empty column $1 to be deleted make it $2 by
inserting an empty column before and adding `/' in $1."
  (while (re-search-forward "^[ \t]*| +/ +|\\(.*|\\)? +\\(<#>\\) *|" nil t)
    (goto-char (match-beginning 2))
    (org-table-delete-column)
    (beginning-of-line)))
(add-hook 'org-export-before-processing-hook
#'mbrand/org-export-delete-commented-cols)
;; (remove-hook 'org-export-before-processing-hook
#'mbrand/org-export-delete-commented-cols)
#+END_SRC


On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 12:29 PM Michael Brand <michael.ch.brand@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Kaushal
>
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 8:40 PM, Kaushal Modi <kaushal.modi@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I was trying to prevent an org table column from exporting to html. So I
> > started looking for a solution and found this:
> > http://stackoverflow.com/q/6641379/1219634
>
> Please see my answer for one solution in the thread "tables, comment
> in one line, export to html" that started on 2016-04-19, e. g. at
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/106497/focus=106683
>
> Michael
>
-- 

-- 
Kaushal Modi