Converting Tabs to Tables

Often, you'll have a table done using tabs ‚ whether imported from a word processor or originally created in InDesign with tabs ‚ that you want to convert to a real InDesign table. That's easy. Select the tabbed text you want to covert and choose Table ‚ Convert Text to Table. You get the Convert Text to Table dialog box, shown in Figure 21-15.

Figure 21-15: The Convert Text to Table dialog box.

In the Convert Text to Table dialog box, you can choose a Column Separator (Tab, Comma, Paragraph, or a text string you enter in the field) or a Row Separator (same options). Although most textual data uses tabs to separate columns and paragraphs to separate rows, you may encounter other data that uses something else. For example, spreadsheets and databases often save data so that commas separate columns rather than tabs. That's why InDesign lets you choose the separator characters before conversion.

During the conversion, InDesign will format the table using the standard settings, using the current text formatting and the default cell insets and stroke types. You can then adjust the table using the tools covered earlier in this chapter. Note that the conversion will treat all rows as body rows.

You can also convert a table to text by selecting multiple cells or an entire table, as described earlier, and choosing Table ‚ Convert Table to Text. InDesign presents the same options as it does in the Convert Text to Table dialog box, so you again can determine how the converted data appears.

QuarkXPress User ‚  

In one way, InDesign is more savvy about text-to-table conversion than QuarkXPress is, since InDesign lets you choose any string as the column or row separator during conversion (just enter that string in the appropriate field). But in another way, InDesign is less savvy: QuarkXPress lets you "pivot" data during conversion, so you can swap columns and rows for a better fit.