Tables 1

[Sam577]

Hi,

Does anyone else find that InDesign has limited table capabilities (especially when importing tables from Word), or is it just me doing it wrong?

When I place the Word doc into ID, tables look completely wrong and I can't fix them.

For example, the header row shading is wrong -- instead of shading the complete row, it shades just the text in each cell, and no matter what I do, I can't fix it.

Any tips?
Sam

 

[jimoblak]

Could it be shading the text in pink? Try using another font in the header row. InDesign shades the background of text if it does not have access to the font. This pink shading will disappear when an installed font is chosen.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[Sam577]

Thanks.

I just found out that the people who designed the ID template created styles to re-create the tables. So the tables that I need to create (i.e. so they look the same as the ones the previous agency created) are not tables at all -- they are styles. The people we're creating these reports for are very picky about the look of their tables -- they want it done exactly to this specification.

So what has to be done for every single table is that we activate the relevant style and re-type the text, and then delete the 'real' table that was imported from Word.

Obviously, this is very unproductive and takes a lot of time, especially when there are a lot of tables.

Without being able to ask the agency why they did this (someone spent hours creating these styles), we can't be sure what the reason was. We're assuming that ID has limited table capabilities.

Do you think this is the right assumption to make -- why else wouldn't they just use the table function in ID?

How do you generally rate ID's table capabilities?

Many thanks
Sam

 

[jimoblak]

ID table capabilities? They are pretty good compared to everything else out there. Both ID2 and IDCS are very capable.

If you are working with plain text frames with tabs used to create columns, you can select all of the text and then go to menu option:
Table>Convert Text to Table

Likewise, you can take your Word tables and convert them back to tabbed text... and then apply the style. There may be no need to retype.

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Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?