Table Questions

[marco_chacon]

Hi,

I'm getting up to speed with Affinity Publisher. I have some questions about tables.

1. Getting a table to work like a picture with text wrapping around it.

I created a text frame and cut / pasted the table into it. This gets the table into a text frame I can move around--but it seems to have problems (getting "stuck" is the best way I can describe it).

 

I don't seem to be able to drag the text frame down under the Primary Stats Cost Table header. It's just stuck there.

 

2. I've tried various frame and stroke/fill options--but the text in the header shows up in those white boxes. Any idea why? Not all the tables I imported have this--but several do. What is the setting I need to change?

 

Thanks,

-M.

[thomaso]

I am not sure what exactly you mean by the two descriptions or what your settings are for the table. For question 1. the answer could be in the Pinning panel and for question 2. in the Table panel (its first two sections). – Thus it would help to see screenshots of these two panels + the Layers panel with the table layer selected.

[R C-R]

50 minutes ago, marco_chacon said:

I created a text frame and cut / pasted the table into it.

In the Layers panel, is this identified as a Table or as a Frame Text layer?

1 hour ago, marco_chacon said:

I don't seem to be able to drag the text frame down under the Primary Stats Cost Table header.

Is the "Primary Stats Cost Table" text a part of the same text frame or a separate layer?

[marco_chacon]

Looks like a Frame Text?

 

Note: these are imported tables. I don't see them as showing up as "tables" in the layer editor.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, marco_chacon said:

Looks like a Frame Text?

Then it is not a table, just text in a frame.

[marco_chacon]

5 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Then it is not a table, just text in a frame.

 

Doesn't the corona of rows and columns around it indicate it's a table?

[R C-R]

33 minutes ago, marco_chacon said:

Doesn't the corona of rows and columns around it indicate it's a table?

If it is not identified as a Table in the Layers panel, then it has not been pasted as a table.

[marco_chacon]

Okay? What do I do then?

[anto]

4 hours ago, marco_chacon said:

Note: these are imported tables. I don't see them as showing up as "tables" in the layer editor.

It is table as you can see small icon and а pop-up menu shows this.

In the video, the first table is created in Publisher and simply pinned.
The second .xlsx table is inserted into the text frame through File-->Place. And the text frame is pinned in the text.
The third one is inserted directly into the text Copy-->Paste inside. 

I can move them all around.
Check again how you insert the table.

 

 

[thomaso]

9 hours ago, marco_chacon said:

Looks like a Frame Text?

Note: these are imported tables. I don't see them as showing up as "tables" in the layer editor.

To question 1.: How did you import the table (e.g. via place / paste / open), respectively what was its initial file format (e.g. xls, idml, rtf)?

To me the table seems to be an Inline Pinned object within a Text Frame of identical size. If that is true, you can not move the table inside its parent text frame (because of same size and thus the limiting bounding box) but could move it with/by its parent text frame. As far I see you can remove the table from its parent text frame (= Unpin via Pinning panel) while this text frame appears unnecessary.

To question 2.: Does the table show this formatting in its original file – or was it styled this way in APub?

Select the cells in the first row ("STAT" … "20") and then check their borders in the Table panel. Note the different icons in the panel, you might need to click through them to get the assigned border parameters displayed accordingly in the panel.

[marco_chacon]

Thanks. I import everything with Place. I've got all my content in various docx files.

 

I will figure out the pinning thing.

2. It came in that way. Changing the top row fill doesn't fix it. Somehow those white spaces seem to actually be in there . .  . somewhow?

[thomaso]

12 minutes ago, marco_chacon said:

2. It came in that way. Changing the top row fill doesn't fix it. Somehow those white spaces seem to actually be in there . .  . somewhow?

What makes you think it is a fill? To me it rather looks like gray borders, no fill. You can detect whether there is a white fill by placing a coloured object underneath (or activate the transparency pattern).

If you want the cells to appear filled with gray just set the fill as wanted.

And you can check how the table colours were styled in their original docx files.

EDIT: There is one more spot where such a white "fill" can get assigned to text: As character background colour (e.g. in the Characters panel).

Edited June 30, 2023 by thomaso

[Old Bruce]

17 minutes ago, marco_chacon said:

Somehow those white spaces seem to actually be in there . .  . somewhow?

I am guessing that the top row has a grey fill and the text has a White Background colour. Place your text caret in the text in the top row and check the Character Panel.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

I am guessing that the top row has a grey fill and the text has a White Background colour.

There might be a more complex setting in this case. I just noticed in @marco_chacon's screenshot the white fill reported for all cells while the table is selected with the Move Tool. – The fact that this white exceeds the visible numbers might indicate that this fill isn't applied to characters only (unless there would be additional space characters before/after the numbers) but indeed is a fill assigned to cells.

Which leads me to another question: In my impression the cell edges have gray borders assigned (with a thinner border for the bottom edge). Right now I experienced in V1 that a border always covers a fill colour + the text, regardless of its Stroke setting "Order: behind", which feels like a bug to me. – Can you confirm this for V1 or V2?

Edited June 30, 2023 by thomaso