Formatting Tables

[Dai777]

As a learning aid I'm using a Pets at Home vaccination brochure in Publisher.

Could any of you guy's guide me in formatting a table. I seem to be a bit lost when it comes to using tables in Publisher.
I've included the file and some images of what I want to accomplish.

What I want to know is:

How do I put in the orange header with the rounded corners in the top of the table?
Is it an object or is there another way?
Also the coloured separators in the table. White at the top orange for the rest on the left hand side.

Tall order I know but any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks Dai

pet.afpub

[GarryP]

I decided to give this a go, just as an experiment, and I managed to get it done eventually, but my-oh-my this functionality really needs a major overhaul before it can be used for anything non-trivial.
I don’t usually complain about the Affinity applications but this area needs a boat-load of work doing to it, including the related ‘help’.
I’ve attached my document, an image and a video.
You will need to go through all the formatting yourself as I simply don’t have the will to explain it at the moment as there are so many things you need to keep messing around with, and go back and forward in, to get it right.
Happy experimenting...

brochure table.afpub

[Joachim_L]

18 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I decided to give this a go, just as an experiment, and I managed to get it done eventually, but my-oh-my this functionality really needs a major overhaul before it can be used for anything non-trivial.
I don’t usually complain about the Affinity applications but this area needs a boat-load of work doing to it, including the related ‘help’.

I have to confess, that I am completely lost here. I never figured it out. I am hoping for a simple beginner tutorial.

[GarryP]

I don’t use this functionality much myself so every time I do try to use it I end up feeling like I’m having to learn it all again from scratch.

Specifically:

• help not available – you can’t have both the Edit Table Format window and the Help window open at the same time (online help is available but, really?);
• unhelpful preview – the ‘preview’ doesn’t show what the table will look like, it only mimics parts of the formatting which is confusing (and the window is so large that it’s often difficult to see the table itself);
• counter-intuitive stuff – the add row button is to the right of the preview and the add column button is below;
• repetitive stuff – new cell formats are always copied from the first one, no way to specify which to use so much re-editing required;
• workflow-busting stuff – to change the text styles used you have to come out of the Edit Table Format window and go to the Text Styles, then edit, then go back into the Edit Table Format window – back and forth.

And that’s just some of the major hassles. Lots of extra little niggles in there that stop it from being a pleasant experience.

Anyone with little Publisher experience trying to use this functionality early on must get very confused and, possibly, quite angry.

[Dai777]

I had a go and came up with this but, still needs a bit of work.
yours is better than mine. Still trying to figure what you did for the orange header with rounded corners.

I used a rectangle with one rounded corner and put it in the table.

 

 

pet.afpub

[GarryP]

I think you’re pretty-much there.
I got the rounded corners on the header by clipping the table inside a non-filled rectangle which has the top two corners rounded.
You can see in the video where I need to manipulate the rectangle independently when I change the table.
Not an ideal solution but it works in this case.

[h_d]

I appreciate it's a learning exercise, but if I were doing a job like this for real then I wouldn't use a table.

The orange shape at the top is a half-depth rectangle placed over a full-depth rounded rectangle. I then used Layer-Geometry-Add to combine them into a single resizable object. The black text is in a single frame with the spacing adjusted with the leading controls. The white text is in four separate frames. The grey shape is a separate rectangle.

The three vertical rules have their blend mode set to Divide, as does the grey rectangle, to achieve the knockout effect but to allow quick repositioning. I drew a single circle with the Ellipse tool and then duplicated and aligned for the blobs. I then grouped the vertical columns of blobs with the word above, again to allow easy repositioning.

As a vet might say, it's horses for courses...

 

 

 

vetsbills.afpub

[Ralph]

.... and I thought it was me being dim (:

[Dai777]

@h_d it could be that the original brochure that I'm copying was not in a table. It just looks like a table. Who knows!
It's been an interesting learning project from my point of view.

[GarryP]

If I had a lot of tables to add to a document I think I would create them in something like LibreOffice Calc, then export to PDFs and place the PDFs (linked) into the document.
This way the tables would also benefit from the auto-calculation/formatting functionality of the spreadsheet.
Any global formatting/colour changes would have to be made in multiple applications, but I think I could live with that.

[Dai777]

On 2/26/2021 at 8:15 AM, GarryP said:

If I had a lot of tables to add to a document I think I would create them in something like LibreOffice Calc, then export to PDFs and place the PDFs (linked) into the document.
This way the tables would also benefit from the auto-calculation/formatting functionality of the spreadsheet.
Any global formatting/colour changes would have to be made in multiple applications, but I think I could live with that.

I didn't even know you could do that. Let alone doing it.

[GarryP]

Try it with a simple spreadsheet in a blank document.
It works pretty well, especially if you use “Prefer Linked” in your document set-up and have “Automatically update linked resources” set in Preferences/General.
You can also have multiple tables in the same spreadsheet and have them all automatically update, see attached video.

[h_d]

If you don't need the automatic updates, you can also use File-Place to drop an Excel spreadsheet into your Publisher document. It will come in as a table which can then be formatted. As I say, there's no link back to the original spreadsheet, but the upside is that the content is still editable.

[Dai777]

Thanks for the tips they will come in handy.

[Greyfox]

On 2/25/2021 at 9:56 PM, h_d said:

I appreciate it's a learning exercise, but if I were doing a job like this for real then I wouldn't use a table.

The orange shape at the top is a half-depth rectangle placed over a full-depth rounded rectangle. I then used Layer-Geometry-Add to combine them into a single resizable object. The black text is in a single frame with the spacing adjusted with the leading controls. The white text is in four separate frames. The grey shape is a separate rectangle.

The three vertical rules have their blend mode set to Divide, as does the grey rectangle, to achieve the knockout effect but to allow quick repositioning. I drew a single circle with the Ellipse tool and then duplicated and aligned for the blobs. I then grouped the vertical columns of blobs with the word above, again to allow easy repositioning.

That works for me. Easier than my attempts with the table tool. 😀

 

 

[Dai777]

On 3/3/2021 at 5:07 AM, Greyfox said:

 

Like I said it's learning exercise I've a lot to learn on this. There seems to be more than one way to achieve this.

I wish Affinity would do a video tutorial on how to lace objects into a table (I mean the orange headers and dots. It would be useful).

Come to think of it Affinity could make multiple videos on the responses in this thread (wishful thinking I know).
It would be good for there library on Publisher videos on You|Tube.

[Dai777]

Just as an addition I've come across an excellent video by Elaine Giles on tables it's over two hours long but she gives some great tips pinning graphics so they stay with tables when moving tales. To find the pining section it starts at 1:16:39. Also the orange dots these are now a font (wingdings letter L) I hope this info helps you guy's out.

 

Pet Table.afpub