Adobe CS5.5 (v.7.5) Mac Upgrade NL 65103975 User Manual
Product codes
65103975
Working with tables
You can easily create sophisticated tables
in InDesign—making
your own from scratch, converting imported text into tables, or placing styled
Word and Excel tables. Tables can flow across multiple pages for easy editing
and automatically include headers and footers. Extensive formatting options,
including alternating fill and stroke controls, enable you to fine-tune the final
design of your tables, and you can create table styles and cell styles to quickly
and consistently format tables and cells.
In InDesign, tables are always
anchored in a text frame. To cre-
ate a new table, select the Type tool,
place the text cursor inside a frame
or create a new text frame, and then
choose Table > Insert Table.
The Insert Table dialog box lets you
The Insert Table dialog box lets you
specify the number of rows and col-
umns for your table. However, you
can later make the table larger or
smaller by placing the text cursor
inside the table and using the options
in the Table panel.
By default, the inserted table fills the
By default, the inserted table fills the
width of the container text frame. If
you make the frame smaller, the table
remains visible outside the frame.
Tables flow with surrounding text,
just like anchored objects. Each cell
in an InDesign table is similar to a
text frame of its own, into which you
can place text, graphics, and other
tables.
You can adjust each column width
You can adjust each column width
and row height in a table by dragging
the dividers with the Type tool.
Converting text to tables
InDesign provides a number of ways
to turn text into tables and tables
into text. For example, you can
import tab-delimited text files from
a spreadsheet or database, select the
text with the Type tool, and choose
Table > Convert Text To Table.
Importing tables
You can import a table from a
Microsoft Word or Excel document
like any other text file. Select Show
Import Options as you import the
data to fine-tune the imported data.
If you copy tabular data from Word
If you copy tabular data from Word
or Excel, you can paste it into an
InDesign table by placing the text
cursor in the upper leftmost cell you
want to populate, and then press-
ing Esc (to select the cell itself) and
choosing Edit > Paste.
Threading tables
Because tables are anchored in
text, InDesign lets you thread them
across multiple text frames, making
it easy to work with lengthy tabular
information. You can set up running
header and footer rows that appear
at the top or bottom of the table on
each page. To convert a normal row
to a header row, select it with the
28 Adobe InDesign CS5 | Conversion Guide