Tables, omg

[3joern]

Hi, yesterday I had the "pleasure" of setting tables over several pages. With Indesign I would be done in 5 minutes, but I convinced my editor aka client to try it with Publisher, because his Indesign is too old for an architecture book with 144 pages.
I almost swept my computer off the table. It was an absolute gamble until I got the table style right. After it all fit and I set another table and wanted to apply the style, the presentation was different again. Besides, you can't let tables flow to the next page.
Also, the presentation of how to set a table style is extremely incomprehensible. 

As a suggestion, it would be better to design the border if you could select the lines in the left-hand area of the example table and if you had a real WYSIWYG there (line widths, colours, areas, etc.). If you choose "Apply selection" you don't see much of the result, because the selection in the layout covers everything. You always have to leave the menu to see the final result, which is very tedious. Also copy and paste a style/cell/row would make things easier. The + and - also not on the right place. The colum "+" add a row (in my point of view). Simply too many ambiguous and non-intuitive possibilities. Make the Applikation for Designers, not Developer   for this really simple table I needed 4h and many grey hairs.

[Catshill]

I spent an hour or more looking at the table tool in APu and decided that I would not be using it in future. 

[RainerH]

the problem with many Publisher functions is: They are not so bad at all, but nowhere is a description how to use it. with the Tabel-tool it's the same. What are the arrows for? How can an Header an changing Linecolour be created? As an user you have all the functions to figure aut youre self...