About tables

[Petar Petrenko]

Hi,

you've done a great job considering tables, guys. I have only these 2 suggestions about them:

1. Spread on multiple pages, and
2. Footnotes in tables, But not as Quark has done (footnote text inside table). Just the footnote index (refference number) to be allowed inside tables and footnote by itself must go at the bottom of the page.

[Joachim_L]

3. Not decreasing width of other cells when increasing width of a cell (instead of doing it Shift+Drag way).

4. Option for adding rows / columns before AND after.

5. Making tables from tabulated text.

6. TBC

[Petar Petrenko]

OK, then. Maybe a simple math? Just:  +  -  :  *  %. Great for invoices.

[Dazmondo77]

Yes please to the above

[captain_slocum]

I agree that the implementation of tables is good, but one of the three reasons I can't leave InDesign yet is that the tables don't flow. I have written about this many times elsewhere for many months but never get an acknowledgement that it is even being considered. If the editor of one of my monthly magazines sends in an amendment needing me to add a row near the front of a table (usually a calendar or a list of contacts, sometimes a long list of parts), then I would have to completely redo all the table boxes on subsequent pages. Apart from the obvious time factor, it is going to lead to mistakes.

(BTW, if you were wondering, the other 2 reasons I can't leave InDesign yet is the lack of custom presets for Find and Replace, and the lack of the ability to span a para across two or more columns. In ID those features save me countless hours every month.)

I am really surprised at what seems to be a lack of faith by the Affinity people in their own product. At the moment APub is only fit for professionals to use if you only produce leaflets and short documents (which it does very well). But add flowing tables and custom FandR presets, and suddenly it can be used for documents and books and specialist catalogues and technical manuals of any length and complexity.

Please take this criticism in the kindly way it is meant, from a professional who very badly wants to see you succeed with APub. It is a fine product and I salute you,  but it's not quite there yet.

[Steve Jarvis]

Recently purchased Affinity Publisher & Photo.

I did not realise that inline tables within a text box was not supported and no text to table function.

Major shortcoming - I will revert back to InDesign until this has been added.

The lack of End Notes is also a major limitation for professional typesetting of books.

PS when I tried to paste tabbed text into a table frame it repeatedly crashed.

Major disappointment.

[walt.farrell]

25 minutes ago, Steve Jarvis said:

I did not realise that inline tables within a text box was not supported

You can create a table and move it on top of a text frame, then Pin it in place, and set its text-wrap properties.

[Stillstanding]

Flowing tables across pages - partial workaround

I too have been using the table features of InDesign for many years to format an 8-10 page index at the end of a publication published 6 times a year. But I have found a partial work around for some features that may be helpful to others. Basically you format the table in MS Word, save as a pdf, then import those pages into Publisher.

MS Word has features such as headers every page, and it flows from page to page too. I have set up a Word document with the same text area as my Publisher document. Start off by setting the Word doc margins the same. Don't forget to save as a pdf at scale 100%, not fit to page etc.

Word tables are a bit fiddly and annoying, but with care and patience you can get the cell and border formats, cell margins etc. to what you need. In my case I then end up with a multi-page pdf. You can then use "Document/Add pages from file" to insert the pdf table. I set up a different master in Publisher for my index which has the page header and footer, page numbers etc. You have the option when you import the pdf where to add it. Minor typos can be edited of course, but any reformats etc. you have to go back to the Word doc.

Now for the next problem...

Mike W

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, Stillstanding said:

I too have been using the table features of InDesign for many years to format an 8-10 page index at the end of a publication

It's an interesting approach, but why not just use the existing Index support in Publisher?

[Stillstanding]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

It's an interesting approach, but why not just use the existing Index support in Publisher?

Ah, OK, let me make what I do clearer! It's not an index of the publication. The publication includes reviews of around 25 patents. These are taken from 400-600 patents published over a 2 month period. I have that data in Excel, and in InDesign flow it over the pages, select it all then use "convert text to table". So its not an index, more a table with 400-600 rows and 5 columns.

In Publisher there is no facility to have a header repeated at the top of each page automatically, nor to flow the table over multiple pages. My index is way too long to do by hand or in sections.

[Petar Petrenko]

8 hours ago, Stillstanding said:

In Publisher there is no facility to have a header repeated at the top of each page automatically,

Of course, it has header and footer row(s), but you can't see them in action because there is no option to span tables over multiple pages. Just open "Studio > Table formats" and double click on the picture.

[captain_slocum]

Interesting work-around Stillstanding. In fact my copy is usually sent to me as Word tables, but I had never thought of formatting it in Word and saving it as a PDF before importing. I shall give it a try.