Creating Tables | Adobe InDesign CS3 Bible

Whether you're working on yesterday 's box scores for the sports pages, an annual report, or a fun, little parenting magazine, you've got numbers. Numbers with dollar signs, numbers with decimals, numbers intermixed with text. You have to line the columns up correctly, not only so the information looks good but so it's easy to read as well. Then you often need to add ruling lines to help separate the material visually for the reader.

You could do all this with tab stops, ruling lines, and other InDesign tools. Or you could make your life easier and use InDesign's table editor, which lets you specify almost any attribute imaginable in a table through the Table pane and the Table menu.

Cross-Reference ‚

InDesign CS lets you import tables from Microsoft Word, RTF, and Microsoft Excel files, including some of their cell formatting. Likewise, you can convert their tables to tabbed text by using the options in the Import Options dialog box accessible when you place a file through the Place dialog box (File ‚ Place, or z +D or Ctrl+D), as covered in Chapter 15.

Figure 21-3 shows the Table pane and Table menu, as well as a complex table used to display a YMCA activities schedule. You access the Table pane via Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Table, or Shift+F9.

Figure 21-3: The Table pane and its palette menu, the Table menu, and a complex table created with them.

QuarkXPress User ‚

InDesign tables and QuarkXPress tables have several differences. Although both treat tables as collections of cells, InDesign offers more formatting options for cell strokes than QuarkXPress does. InDesign has more controls for text and row placement than QuarkXPress offers. InDesign also imports Word, Excel, and RTF tables, while QuarkXPress does not. But QuarkXPress offers more control over the flow of text among cells in a table ‚ InDesign doesn't let you flow text from one cell to another, for example, much less control the order of that flow.

Creating a table

To create a table in InDesign, you first create or select a text frame with the text Tool and then choose Table ‚ Insert Table or press Option+Shift+ z +T or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T. That produces the Insert Table dialog box, where you enter the number of body rows and columns and the number of header and footer rows. Click OK to have InDesign create the basic table, which will be set as wide as the text frame. The depth will be based on the number of rows, with each row defaulting to the height that will hold 12-point text.

With the basic table in place, you now format it using the Table pane and the Table menu. The pane contains cell formatting tools: You can increase or decrease the number of rows and columns, set the row and column height, set the text's vertical alignment within selected cells (top, middle, bottom, and justified), choose one of four text-rotation angles, and set the text margin within a cell separately for the top, bottom, left, and right. Note that all the Table pane's options affect only the currently selected cell(s), except for the Number of Rows and Number of Columns fields. Figure 21-4 shows the Table pane with its icons defined.

Figure 21-4: The Table pane.

Note ‚

You set cell text's horizontal alignment using the paragraph formatting controls covered in Chapter 18. You can apply other paragraph and character formatting to cell text as described in Chapters 17 through 20. You can also apply tabs within cells using the Tabs pane covered earlier in this chapter.

For more sophisticated table attributes, use the Table Options dialog box and its five panes, as shown in Figures 21-5 through 21-8. You access this dialog box using the Table Options menu item in the Table pane's palette menu or by choosing Table ‚ Table Options. In both menus , you can select a specific pane using a submenu from the Table Options menu item.

To add items to a table, you can type in text in any cell, paste text or graphics into a cell, or place text or graphics into a cell by choosing File ‚ Place or pressing z +D or Ctrl+D.

Table Setup pane

The Table Setup pane (shown in Figure 21-5) lets you adjust the rows and columns, as you can do in the Table pane. It's also where you specify the table border's weight, line type, color, tint, gap color and tint (if you choose a dashed, dotted , or striped line for the border), the space before and after the table, and whether row lines (which InDesign calls strokes ) are placed on top of column lines or vice versa. If your table has cells with different line settings that would be overridden by the table border, you can preserve those cell settings by checking the Preserve Local Formatting check box.

Figure 21-5: The Table Setup pane.

New Feature ‚

InDesign CS adds the ability to specify whether row lines overprint column lines or vice versa.

Tip ‚

You can open the Table Setup pane by pressing Option+Shift+ z +B or Ctrl+Alt+_Shift+B.

Row Strokes and Column Strokes panes

InDesign lets you have the lines between columns and rows alternate color, thickness , and even type. Figure 21-6 shows the Row Strokes pane; the Column Strokes pane is identical, except that it applies to column (vertical) strokes rather than to row (horizontal) strokes.

Figure 21-6: The Row Strokes pane; the Column Strokes pane is identical.

You can choose a predefined alternation pattern using the Alternating Pattern pop-up menu, or simply enter a number in the First fields. The First field at the left of the pane specifies how many row strokes (or column strokes) get the formatting specified on the left side of the pane, while the First field at the right side specifies how many get the formatting specified at the right. InDesign will apply the formatting at left to the number of rows specified in its First field, then switch to the formatting at right for the number of rows specified in that First field. If there are still more rows, InDesign switches back to the left side's formatting, repeating the alternating pattern until it runs out of rows. The Column Strokes pane works the same way.

In addition to specifying the line attributes, you can also have InDesign skip a specified number of top and bottom rows (or columns) using the Skip First and Skip Last fields. You would specify these so header and footer rows are excluded from the pattern.

Fills pane

The Fills pane, shown in Figure 21-7, is similar to the Row Strokes and Column Strokes panes. You set the color, tint, alternation pattern, and any skipped rows for fills you want applied to your table. The Alternating Pattern pop-up menu lets you pick from predefined numbers of columns or rows, depending on whether you want the fills to alternate from left to right or from top to bottom across the table.

Figure 21-7: The Fills pane.

If you choose Custom Row, InDesign will use the alternation settings in the Row Strokes pane; if you choose Custom Column, InDesign will use the alteration settings in the Column Strokes pane. That ensures the line color and other settings change with the fills.

Headers and Footers pane

The Headers and Footers pane, shown in Figure 21-8, lets you change the number of header and footer rows, as well as specify how often the header and footer repeats. (If your Word or RTF file's table used a heading row, InDesign will designate that as a reader row.) Your options are Every Text Column, Once per Frame, and Once per Page. You'll usually use one of the latter options, since it automatically repeats the header row for tables that break across text frames and/or pages.

Figure 21-8: The Headers and Footers pane.

Working with rows and columns

InDesign's table editing tools work very much like those in Microsoft Word. To select a row or column, click on an outside edge; you can also click in a cell with the Text tool and choose Table ‚ Select and then pick Row ( z +3 or Ctrl+3) or Column (Option+ z +3 or Ctrl+Alt+3). The same submenu also lets you pick all header rows, all footer rows, and all body (regular) rows.

To move to a specified row, you can choose Table ‚ Go to Row and enter the row's number, but it's usually easier to use your mouse to move to the desired row. After all, how often do you know the row's number?

To quickly select header rows or footer rows, choose Table ‚ Edit Header or Table ‚ Edit Footer.

Note ‚

Choose Table ‚ Select ‚ Table, or press Option+ z +A or Ctrl+Alt+A, to select an entire table. Choose Table ‚ Delete ‚ Table to delete an entire table.

Adding and deleting

Insert or delete rows and columns using the Table menu or the Table pane's palette menu. Both have Insert and Delete menu options. Selected rows or columns will be deleted, while new rows or columns will be inserted before any selected row or column. You can also use the following shortcuts:

Delete Row: z +Backspace or Ctrl+Backspace
Delete Column: Shift+Backspace
Insert Row: z +9 or Ctrl+9
Insert Column: Option+ z +9 or Ctrl+Alt+9

Manipulating rows and columns

You can make the space between rows or columns even by choosing Table ‚ Distribute Rows Evenly or Table ‚ Distribute Columns Evenly. But be careful: If you have merged several cells, that will increase the perceived column or row size and cause InDesign to excessively space rows or columns based on those merged cells' size .

You can also resize rows and columns by clicking on any of the cell boundaries and dragging them ‚ similar to how you can resize columns and rows in Microsoft Word's table editor.

InDesign also lets you control how rows break across frames and pages, and whether rows must be kept together. But to do so it uses a dialog box oriented to cell formatting, covered later in this chapter.

New Feature ‚

InDesign CS can now convert regular (body) rows to header and footer rows, or vice versa. Select the row(s) you want to convert, then choose Table ‚ Convert Rows and then choose To Header, To Body, or To Footer as appropriate.

Note ‚

All the row and column options are available in both the Table menu and the Table pane's palette menu, as well as via the contextual menu that appears if you have selected one or more cells and Control+click or right-click.

Working with cells

InDesign offers the Cell Options panes to manage the formatting of cells. It's accessible by choosing Cell Options from the Table menu or from the Table pane's palette menu. Four panes are available, as shown in Figures 21-9 through 21-12.

Text pane

The Text pane, accessible via the shortcut Option+ z +B or Ctrl+Alt+B and shown in Figure 21-9, covers several options available in the Table pane covered earlier in this chapter, including the top, bottom, left, and right cell insets (margins), as well as vertical text alignment and text rotation. But it has several other options:

Paragraph Spacing Limit determines the maximum space between paragraphs in a cell when you choose Justify from the Align Pop-up menu. This prevents there being too much space between paragraphs in a cell.
First Baseline determines how the text baseline is positioned from the top of a cell. The options are Ascent, Cap Height, Leading, x Height, and Fixed.

Cross-Reference ‚
Vertical alignment and baseline positioning work the same as they do for text frames, as covered in Chapter 15.
Clipping Contents to Cell displays only the amount of text that fits in the cell's current size ‚ it prevents the cell from expanding to accommodate the text.

Figure 21-9: The Text pane.

Strokes and Fills pane

Shown in Figure 21-10, the Strokes and Fills pane lets you choose the weight, type, color, and tint of the strokes around a cell, as well as any gap color and tint (if you choose a striped, dashed, or dotted line as the stroke type).

Figure 21-10: The Strokes and Fills pane.

At the top of the pane is the representation of the selected cell(s), depending on whether you had one or multiple cells highlighted before opening this pane. Figure 21-10 shows the representation when multiple cells are selected across more than one row and more than one column. (If you select multiple cells in one row, you'll get two cells shown side by side; if you select multiple cells in one column, you'll get two cells, one on top of the other.)

You click on the cell boundary you want to apply the stroke formatting to and then choose the formatting you want. You could have different formatting for each of the left, right, top, and bottom outside cell boundaries, as well as different formatting for the horizontal boundary between selected cells and for the vertical formatting for the vertical boundary between selected cells. Usually, you'll select all outside boundaries and apply stroke formatting to all of them simultaneously , and you may do the same for the interior boundaries as well.

Note ‚

InDesign does not show you the stroke formatting applied to the representation's segments, so you may not realize that different segments have different settings. Therefore, it's best to make sure the selected cells are visible and that you've checked the Preview option so you can see what you're actually applying to the cells.

In this pane, you can also select a fill color for the selected cells, based on existing color swatches, as well as a tint.

For both cell strokes and fills, you can set them as Overprint, which means the color will print on top of any underlying color, rather than knock out that color. Overprinting can change the color the reader sees, since it essentially mixes inks. Overprinting a blue fill on a yellow background, for example, would result in a green fill.

Rows and Columns pane

Shown in Figure 21-11, the Row and Columns pane sets row height and column width, as well as keep options for rows:

With the Row Height pop-up menu, you specify the height as either Exactly or At Least the measurement to the right of the menu. This is the same as what you can specify in the Table pane.
The Column Width field is also the same option you have in the Table pane to set the column width.
The keep options control row placement. Use the Start Row pop-up menu to determine where the selected row starts: Anywhere, which means after the previous row (space permitting in the text frame, of course); In Next Text Column; In Next Frame; On Next Page; On Next Odd Page; or On Next Even Page. Check the Keep with Next Row check box to keep rows together.

Figure 21-11: The Rows and Columns pane.

Diagonal Lines pane

A unique InDesign feature is the ability to place diagonal lines in table cells. Figure 21-12 shows the Diagonal Lines pane. It's similar to other panes involving strokes but does have two specific options:

You choose the type of diagonal line ‚ top-left to bottom-right, bottom-left to top-right, or both ‚ using the icons at the top of the pane.
You determine whether the diagonal line appears on top of the cell contents or vice versa using the Draw pop-up menu.

Figure 21-12: The Rows and Columns pane.

Other cell options

Most of the work you'll do with cells involves entering and editing text (or graphics), applying fills and strokes, and setting margins (as covered earlier in this chapter), as well as formatting text (as covered in Chapters 17 through 20) and formatting frames (as covered in Chapters 10 and 11). After all, a cell is essentially just a text or graphics frame that's contained in a table with other frames. But there are a few other things to know about working with cells:

You can merge and unmerge cells by highlighting the cell(s) and choosing Table ‚ Merge Cells or Table ‚ Unmerge Cells.

New Feature ‚
The ability to unmerge cells is new to InDesign CS.
You can split cells by highlighting the cell(s) and choosing Table ‚ Split Cell Horizontally or Table ‚ Split Cell Vertically. To unsplit cells, you must merge them. (You could also choose Edit ‚ Undo, or press z +Z or Ctrl+Z, before taking another action.) Split cells will take on the cell's current settings for text formatting, fill color, size, margins, and strokes.
InDesign indicates text that does not fit in a cell with a large red dot in the cell, as Figure 21-13 shows.

Figure 21-13: InDesign indicates text that does not fit in a cell by displaying large red dots in the cell, as done at top here.
You can apply colors and gradients to cells, as well as strokes, using the standard InDesign Swatches, Gradient, and Stroke panes (all accessible via the Window menu). These have the same effect as using the equivalent Table menu and Table pane options.

The Control palette offers easy access to several cell and table features, as Figure 21-14 shows.

Figure 21-14: The Control palette when table cells are selected.

New Feature ‚

The ability to apply stroke types, such as dashed and dotted lines, to cell edges is new to InDesign CS. You apply these strokes via the Stroke pane (Window ‚ Stroke, or F10). Use the palette menu to select the Stroke Styles menu option, which provides a list of styles and the ability to create your own, as Chapter 11 explains.