Importing Tables from Word

[hiker135]

I am new to publisher and am looking for some recommendations about importing tables. I have somewhat irregular 'tables' (various kinds of puzzles, see example picture below). I have them created in Word as tables (with appropriate border drawing or not), which I found somewhat convenient. But these tables do not import properly into publisher as part of a Word file (cells are stretched, images in the tables (none in this picture) are placed incorrectly, ...). Now I am not that much concerned about this, since I have only started my work, and am happy to switch tools. But I am wondering what the recommended ways of getting this kind of table/drawing into publisher are? Should I export the tables from Word in a different format (pdf??), which would work better when bringing it into publisher? Should I create them as graphics with a different tool (any recommendations)?

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @hiker135
I would try exporting as PDF first and see how well that works – looking at your example it should be fine. Using a PDF allows you to resize the placed PDF without losing the sharp definition of the original, including the text.
If that doesn’t work well enough you can try exporting as either PNG (allows for transparent backgrounds) or JPG. Using a raster format (e.g. PNG, JPG, etc.) means that everything will be pixelated to some degree and resizing could be a problem so in the export options give it a high resolution/DPI (e.g. 300 DPI, or 118 pixels/cm) if you can.

P.S. I would have thought that creating this sort of grid would be much easier in something like Excel or LibreOffice Calc rather than Word. Spreadsheets are ‘grid-based’ and therefore lend themselves towards creating ‘grid-based’ stuff like this.

[lacerto]

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[hiker135]

Thank you so much for your answers, especially for the effort of re-creating it! Doing the puzzles directly in Publisher hadn't occurred to me (am pretty much a beginner), so I will have a look at that (though it would mean that we need two copies of publisher, since atm we use Publisher on Mac, and I create the puzzles on Windows).

Also thanks for suggesting PDF, I will also have a look at that. As explanation why I am not using Excel: the text accompanying the puzzles plus the clues are written in Word, so it meant I could stay within one tool (and it worked quite well once I figured out the best way. I tried some graphical tools like LIbreOffice Draw, but a Word table was just faster).

[lacerto]

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[hiker135]

I have a lot of puzzles form various puzzle quests that I have done in the last years, and decided to use our 'lockdown' time to assemble them into a standalone book. I quickly ran into problems when I tried to do that in Word (since each puzzle was an individual word file ... I admit I can't remember the details now, but trying to insert Word documents into Word documents caused all kind of problems, besides the usual problem of managing images and layout in Word).

So I tried affinity publisher, and was mostly happy with the results (especially since some of my plans for my next puzzle quest need a much more flexible layout, which will likely be a nightmare with word), except some problems with puzzles that were somehow based on tables. Now thanks to the answers hear I have a nice way forward to import old puzzles (using pdf), and various options when creating new ones, so I really appreciate all your work, and will sit down and see which one is faster for creating new puzzles.

Note while I did call myself a beginner, my wife has worked with indesign professionally (we just can't afford that obviously ), so we don't face a steep learning curve other beginners might have (though of course some things are just different in indesign compared with publisher, according to my wife ). And while I don't think this book will ever professionally printed (more likely a pdf that people can print themselves) ... who knows ... I prefer to start doing it properly from the beginning and keep my options open.

Thanks a lot for your help!