Working with Tabs and Tables
In This Chapter
ᮣ Working with tabs
ᮣ Setting up and adjusting tables
ᮣ Formatting tables directly and with styles
ᮣ Turning tabbed text to tables, and vice versa
Perhaps the most common business-oriented formatting done in InDesign involves tabular material, whether financial tables or simple comparative feature lists. InDesign provides two methods for creating tabular material: old-fashioned tabs and more sophisticated tables. Although you can create tables with tabs, you have less control over the formatting and thus can create just basic tables when you use tabs. On the other hand, for simple tables, using tabs is often the faster method. So don’t feel you should never use tabs — but do be sure that when you mix methods that you don’t let visual consistency suffer as a result.
Tabs and tables in InDesign work somewhat like the same functions in Microsoft Word, so if you’re familiar with Word’s tabs and tables, you’ll have a quick adjustment to InDesign’s, at least for the basic capabilities. Setting Tabs
To set tabs in InDesign, you use the Tabs panel, which floats above your text so that you can keep it open until you’re finished experimenting with tabs. To open the Tabs panel, choose Type➪Tabs (Shift+Ô+T or Ctrl+Shift+T). Figure 19-1
shows the Tabs panel along with a simple table created using one tab stop.
You can also set up tabs in the Tabs pane of the New Paragraph Styles and Paragraph Style Options dialog boxes, so tabs are consistently applied to all paragraphs. Chapter 13 covers styles in more detail.
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Figure 19-1:
The Tabs
panel, its
flyout menu,
and a table
created
using tab
settings.
Four buttons — Left, Center, Right, and Align On — on the Tabs panel let you control how the text aligns with the tab you’re creating. The Align On option is usually used for decimal tabs, which means that a period in the text aligns on the tab stop. But you can align on any character, not just periods —
simply specify the align-on character in the Align On field. (If you enter nothing in the Align On field, InDesign assumes that you want to align to periods.) If the Align On field isn’t visible in the Tabs panel, just widen the panel by dragging one of its sides so that the field displays.
The X: field of the Tabs panel lets you specify a position for a new tab stop. You can type a value in this field in 0.01-point increments and then press Shift+Enter or Shift+Return to create a tab. InDesign positions tabs relative to the left edge of the text frame or column.
Rather than typing values in the X: field, you can position tabs by clicking at the desired location on the ruler at the bottom of the Tabs panel. You can also drag tab stops within the ruler to change their position. And you can reposition left and right indents and indent hangs using the arrow sliders on the tab ruler. (The arrow sliders have the same effects as changing indents using the Paragraph panel or Paragraph Styles panel, as explained in Chapter 14.)
To have the Tabs panel “snap” to your text frame so that you can see exactly where the tab stops will be, click the Position Panel Above Text Frame iconic button (the magnet icon).
If you need a tab flush with the right margin — for example, to position a dingbat at the end of the story — press Shift+Tab. You don’t need to use the Tabs panel.
InDesign lets you specify up to eight characters, including special characters, that will repeat to fill any white space. These repeating characters are called leaders. When you set a leader for a tab stop, the leaders actually fill any space prior to that tab stop (between the previous text and the tab location). Chapter 19: Working with Tabs and Tables
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To spread out the leader characters, type spaces between the characters you enter. Don’t enter spaces before and after a single character, though, as that will result in two spaces between the characters when the pattern repeats (unless that’s the look you’re going for).
In addition to setting tabs in the Tabs panel, InDesign provides four additional options through its flyout menu: Clear All, Delete Tab, Repeat Tab, and Reset Indents.
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The Clear All command deletes any tabs you’ve created, and any text positioned with tabs reverts to the position of the default tab stops. (You can delete an individual tab stop by dragging its icon off the ruler.) ߜ
The Delete Tab command deletes the currently selected tab. (Just click it in the tab ruler.)
You can also delete tabs by dragging them off the tab ruler using the mouse.
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The Repeat Tab command lets you create a string of tabs across the ruler that are all the same distance apart. When you select a tab on the ruler and choose this command, InDesign measures the distance between the selected tab and the previous tab (or, if it’s the first tab on the ruler, the distance between the selected tab and the left indent/text inset). The program then uses this distance to place new tabs, with the same alignment, all the way across the ruler. InDesign repeats tabs only to the right of the selected tab, but it inserts tabs between other tab stops.
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The Reset Indents command removes any changes to the left indent, right indent, or indent hang settings made in the Tabs panel using the arrow sliders, and reverts to the indents defined in the paragraph style currently applied to the text.
Setting Up Tables
You can create tables using tabs, but the more complex the table, the more work that requires. So make your life easier and use InDesign’s table editor, which lets you specify almost any attribute imaginable in a table through the Table panel and the Table menu.
InDesign 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 that is accessible when you place a file through the Place dialog box (File➪Place [Ô+D or Ctrl+D]), as covered in Chapter 11.
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InDesign CS4’s tables now support three features that previous versions neglected:
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You can now insert notes into tables (an expert feature not covered in this book).
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Changes you make in tables display as tracked changes in the companion InCopy software (also an expert feature not covered in this book ߜ
You can now edit tables’ contents in the Story Editor view (see Chapter 12). To create a table in InDesign:
1. Create or select a text frame with the Type tool and then choose Table➪Insert Table (Option+Shift+Ô+T or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T).
If you select an existing text frame, the table is inserted at the cursor’s location in the existing text.
The Insert Table dialog box appears.
2. Type the number of body rows and columns and the number of header and footer rows.
Header and footer rows repeat on each page for tables that go across multiple pages.
3. Click OK to have InDesign create the basic table.
The table is set as wide as the text frame. The depth is based on the number of rows, with each row defaulting to the height that will hold 12-point text.
You can also apply a table style to the new table by selecting one from the Table Style pop-up menu. I cover how to create these styles in the “Using table and cell styles” section, later in this chapter.
With the basic table in place, you now format it using the Table panel and the Table menu. In both, 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 panel’s options affect only the currently selected cells, except for the Number of Rows and Number of Columns fields. Figure 19-2 shows the Table panel and its flyout menu, as well as an example table created using these tools.
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If you have a smallish monitor, set at 1024 by 768 pixels — the norm for a 17-inch display — the Table, Table Styles, and Cell Styles panels may be shoved to the bottom of the panel dock, and, when they’re selected, the only thing you see is their panel tab and flyout menu icon. You have a few choices: Shorten other panel groups in the dock to make room for them, remove other panel groups to make room for them, or drag them out of the dock and make them floating.
Figure 19-2:
The Table
panel and
its flyout
menu, with
an example
table.
You set cell text’s horizontal alignment using the paragraph formatting controls (see Chapter 14). You can apply character formatting to cell text (see Chapter 15). You can also apply tabs within cells using the Tabs panel covered in the “Setting Tabs” section of this chapter.
To add items to a table, you can type text in any cell, paste text or graphics into a cell, or place text or graphics into a cell by choosing File➪Place (Ô+D
or Ctrl+D). Note that any tabbed text pasted into a cell retains the tabs, with all the text pasted into the same cell — InDesign doesn’t look at those tabs and assume that you wanted the tabbed text converted into multiple cells.
To insert a tab character into a table cell, don’t press Tab — that just advances you to the next cell. Instead, choose Type➪Insert Special Character➪Other➪Tab.
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Adjusting tables
InDesign lets you add and delete rows and columns, as well as split and join cells using the Insert, Delete, Merge, and Split commands in the Table menu and in the Table panel’s flyout menu. You can also select rows, columns, and entire tables using the Table menu. Several shortcuts, shown in Table 19-1, speed things along if you’re a keyboard-oriented person.
These commands work intuitively, so I won’t bore you with detailed explanations here. For example, to delete a row, select it or a cell within it using the Type tool and then choose Table➪Delete➪Row. To split a cell vertically, select the cell and choose Table➪Split Cell Vertically. You get the idea. Table 19-1
Table-Editing Shortcuts
Command
Macintosh Shortcut
Windows
Shortcut
Select cell
Ô+/
Ctrl+/
Select row
Ô+3
Ctrl+3
Select column
Option+Ô+3
Ctrl+Alt+3
Select table
Option+Ô+A
Ctrl+Alt+A
Insert column
Option+Ô+9
Ctrl+Alt+9
Insert row
Ô+9
Ctrl+9
Delete column
Shift+Delete
Shift+Backspace
Delete row
Ô+Delete
Ctrl+Backspace
Formatting tables
For more sophisticated table attributes, use the Table Options dialog box and its five panes. (Choose Table➪Table Options and then the desired pane from the submenu. To go straight to the Table Setup pane, you can also just press Option+Shift+Ô+B or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B.) You see the Table Setup pane, shown in Figure 19-3. If you want to go straight to one of the four other panes, you can do so by choosing the desired pane in the submenu after choosing Table➪Table Options.
When formatting tables, take advantage of the Preview option in most dialog boxes to see the effects of your changes before committing to them.
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Figure 19-3:
The Table
Setup pane
of the Table
Options
dialog box.
If you select more than one cell — meaning the entire cell, not just some of its contents — the Control panel’s options change to display many of the controls available in the Table panel, as well as some cell-oriented controls, such as setting cell boundary line weights and line types.
Here are some of the basics to keep in mind:
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The Table Setup pane lets you change the number of rows and columns, as well as footer rows and columns. You also can specify the table border, color, line type, and even tint. Use the Table Spacing options to have space automatically added before and after a table that is in the same text frame as other text.
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The Row Strokes pane lets you decide how often rows have an alternating pattern of strokes applied to them. For example, you may want every third row to have a thicker stroke than the first and second rows, because each set of three rows is related to each other and the third row marks the end of that set. You choose how many rows you want the special stroke to skip before being applied in the Alternating Pattern pop-up menu and then use the rest of the controls to choose the stroke weight, color, type, and so on.
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The Column Strokes pane works just like the Row Strokes pane, except it lets you alternate the strokes across columns rather than rows.
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The Fills pane (shown in Figure 19-4) works like the Row Strokes pane and Column Strokes pane, except that it applies a fill to the cells in the specified series of rows or columns. The reason that there is just one pane for fills but two for strokes is that you can’t have both row fills and column fills automatically applied to the same table — that would usually make for a hard-to-read checkerboard. Of course, you can use horizontal fills to accentuate rows and use strokes on columns to help keep them visually separate.
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The Headers and Footers pane lets you change the number of header and footer rows — just like the Table Setup pane — but it also lets you control how often the header and/or footer rows repeat: Every Text Column, Once Per Frame, or Once Per Page.
Figure 19-4:
The Fills
pane of
the Table
Options
dialog box.
InDesign also provides formatting controls over cells, using the Cell Options dialog box. (Choose Table➪Cell Options and then one of the four desired panes: Text, Strokes and Fills, Rows and Columns, and Diagonal Lines. You can go straight to the Text pane by pressing Option+Ô+B or Ctrl+Alt+B.) After you selected the cells you want to format, use the various panes as desired:
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The Text pane works very much like the General pane of the Text Frame Options dialog box (see Chapter 14). Here, you set how far text is inset from the cell boundaries, how text is vertically aligned within the cell, and where the text baseline begins within the cell. Unique to cells, you can also specify whether the cell grows to fit the text automatically (by unchecking Clip Contents to Cell) and the degree of text rotation (0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees).
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The Strokes and Fills pane, shown in Figure 19-5, lets you set the stroke and fill for selected cells. You can select which cell boundaries to apply a stroke to, by selecting the sides from the preview image at the top of the pane and then choosing the desired options. You can also set the desired fill color and tint.
Figure 19-5:
The Strokes
and Fills
pane of the
Cell Options
dialog box.
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The Rows and Columns pane lets you set the row height, including its maximum for rows that are allowed to expand automatically as specified in the Text pane, as well as the column width. You also can specify which rows must be kept together and if certain rows should start at a new page, frame, or column.
You can also adjust column and row heights by dragging on the row and column boundaries with the mouse.
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The Diagonal Lines pane lets you place three types of diagonal lines within cells — upper left to lower right, lower right to upper left, or both — and then specify the stroke weight, type, color, and tint. You can also choose whether the diagonal lines overprint the cell contents or vice versa. To remove a diagonal line, just click the No Diagonal Lines iconic button. Using table and cell styles
To make it easy to apply and update table formatting across a document, InDesign lets you create and apply table and cell styles. They work like paragraph, character, and object styles, taking the table formatting features covered in the previous section and bringing them together into the New Table Style and New Cell Style dialog boxes.
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To work with table styles, open the Table Styles panel by choosing Window➪Type & Tables➪Table Styles. To work with cell styles, open the Cell Styles panel by choosing Window➪Type & Tables➪Cell Styles. Choose New Table Style or New Cell Style from the appropriate panel’s flyout menu and then use the various panes to specify the desired formatting. The panes, and their options, are the same as described in the previous section, “Formatting tables.” Figure 19-6 shows the New Table Style dialog box’s General pane.
Whether creating a new table style or a new cell style, the easiest method is to format an existing table or cell the way you want it, select it, and then create a new table or cell style — InDesign picks up the existing formatting for the new style. Otherwise, you have to specify everything in the New Table Style or New Cell Style dialog box, where it’s harder to see the effects of your settings. (Even if you enable the Preview option, the dialog boxes are fairly large and tend to obscure most of your document.)
Figure 19-6:
The General
pane of the
New Table
Styles
dialog box.
Keep in mind a few notes about creating table and cell styles — in the General pane of the New Table Style and New Cell Style dialog boxes — that you should know before getting too far into them:
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You give each style its own name. Choose names that will make sense a week or a month later so that you know what they’re meant to be used for!
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You can base a new table style on an existing one, so changes to the parent style are automatically reflected in the children styles based on it. ߜ
You can assign a keyboard shortcut to styles you use frequently. When creating table styles, you can also have the table style automatically apply the cell styles of your choosing to the following table elements: header rows, footer rows, body rows, the leftmost column, and the rightmost column. When creating cell styles, you can choose a paragraph style to be automatically applied to text in cells using the style. Chapter 19: Working with Tabs and Tables
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To apply styles to selected tables or cells, just choose the desired style from the Table Style or Cell Style panel. To override existing formatting, use the options indicated for paragraph and character styles described in Chapter 13. Modifying and managing
table and cell styles
To modifying styles, just double-click the style name in the Table Styles or Cell Styles panel to open the Table Style Options or Cell Style Options dialog box, which is identical to the New Table Styles or New Cell Styles dialog box explained in the previous section. Make your changes, click OK, and your styles and all tables and cells using them are instantly updated!
InDesign also lets you manage your styles, such as creating groups of styles to keep them better organized, and bringing in styles from other documents. Because these features work the same for paragraph and character styles as well, I cover them in Chapter 13.
Converting Tabs to Tables (and Back)
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. All you have to do is select the tabbed text you want to convert using the Type tool and choose Table➪Convert Text to Table. In the Convert Text to Table dialog box, you can choose a Column Separator (Tab, Comma, Paragraph, or a text string you type 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, rather than tabs, separate columns. That’s why InDesign lets you choose the separator characters before conversion. During the conversion, InDesign formats 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 in the
“Formatting tables” section, earlier in this chapter. Note that the conversion treats all rows as body rows.
You can also convert a table to text by selecting multiple cells or an entire table and choosing Table➪Convert Table to Text. InDesign presents the same options as it does in the Convert Text to Table dialog box so that you can determine how the converted data appears.
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