Section 54. Add Style to Your Table

54. Add Style to Your Table

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

52 Insert a Table

SEE ALSO

35 Add a Table

48 Use the HTML Views

With the table sized and formatted correctly for your design, you can start to change the styles of the table to visually present your information.

1.	Join the Headline Cell with the Adjacent Cell Cells are good at containing bits of content. Sometimes you need to let important content fill an entire row. Let's use an example of a headline in a cell that needs to spread its wings across the row. Click on the text with the headline, and then right-click and select Join with Cell on Right from the context menu. Your headline now extends across the top of the entire table. You can also join cells vertically by selecting two or more cells by clicking and dragging across them and then selecting Join Selected Cells from the context menu. There is a problem with the cell that you can't visually see in the editor right now, but you will see it in the browser if you view the page. Let's discuss what would happen if you had an existing column width restriction. Imagine in your last edits to the headline, you set the width of the column to 200 pixels. Here you have made the cell very wide so that it crosses the whole table and is a lot wider than 200 pixels. This is confusing for Composer , so it shows that the headline goes all the way across the table in the Normal view. To actually make the text stretch across the whole table, click on the cell. In the Table Cell Properties dialog box, remove the width property so that it can display correctly. So if you find conflicting results on your pages and in your tables, check for conflicting settings.
2.	Select Table Cell Properties Hold down the Control key and click on the text in the lower-right portion of the table. Select Table Cell Properties from the context menu. 54. Add Style to Your Table TIP When you want to select just one cell and not the contents of the cell, hold down the Control key as you click on the cell.
3.	Set the Content Alignment Horizontal Section to Justify In the Table Properties dialog box on the Cells tab, set the Content Alignment Horizontal section to Justify and click on the check box next to it. Setting your text to justify makes the text go from one side of the cell to the other and spaces the words so that there is no ragged margin on the right side of the cell. This can make your text a little harder to read sometimes, but it sets the block of text as one single unit that will stand apart well from other text on the page.
4.	Click OK and Save Your Page Your text in the lower-right side of the table should be justified with each complete line extending across from each side of the cell to the other side of the cell. If you want to try changing more attributes in the Cells tab of the Table Properties dialog box, just click on the Apply tab as you work to see the changes applied to the table while keeping the dialog box open to keep making changes to the cell.