Copying data into tables

[riball]

When copying data into tables from other applications such as PP, word or excel, all the data is placed into one cell rather than being distributed between cells as in the original.

All other applications I use are able to place the data appropriately.  Is this a 'feature' or am I doing something wrong?

Hopefully it will be remedied.

R

[Old Bruce]

Select more than one cell, then paste.

[peja]

I can conform that copying data (comma separated or tab separated) does not work on the macOS version. I tried all hints that I could find in the forum (select several cells etc.) - no luck. I would expect this to be fixed for the release version, it is such a basic feature. How it works in QuarkXPress: copy anything from the clipboard that looks like structured data (lines of comma/tab separated text fields) anywhere on the page and Quark will create a generic table with no styling, just thin table/cell borders and text in a default font - and that's perfectly fine.

[carl123]

On 13 October 2018 at 11:31 AM, peja said:

I can conform that copying data (comma separated or tab separated) does not work on the macOS version. I tried all hints that I could find in the forum (select several cells etc.) - no luck. I would expect this to be fixed for the release version, it is such a basic feature. How it works in QuarkXPress: copy anything from the clipboard that looks like structured data (lines of comma/tab separated text fields) anywhere on the page and Quark will create a generic table with no styling, just thin table/cell borders and text in a default font - and that's perfectly fine.

For now you can open your comma or tab separated file in Excel, copy the cells and paste into a Publisher Table.

Just remember to select at least 2 cells in Publisher before doing the paste

[riball]

Have tried copy and paste from PP table and highlighted more than one cell in AP but data still copied to one cell.

I have also tried it from excel and that works fine.

PP produces a tab delimited output when data is copied from a table, please can AP be set up to recognise tab as well as comma delimited data?

R

[Loquos]

On 10/15/2018 at 12:45 PM, riball said:

Have tried copy and paste from PP table and highlighted more than one cell in AP but data still copied to one cell.

I have also tried it from excel and that works fine.

PP produces a tab delimited output when data is copied from a table, please can AP be set up to recognise tab as well as comma delimited data?

R

This.

I've been struggling with copy and pasting from a Google Spreadsheet. Now that I have 50+ cells to pull from, the individual copy & paste wasn't going to cut it, so I dug around on the forums. I found that downloading the Google Spreadsheet as an XLSX file, then opening it in Libre Office (because that's what I have) and then copy & pasting from there seems to stop the aggravating "all in one cell" issue I was having with Google Spreadsheet. Though this was never a problem in ID, so I'm guessing it's an issue on the AP side?

[bobr666]

Also was having this problem. Tried pasting from Google Sheets, XL and Libre Office. Tried with two cells selected. Tried with exact number selected. Tried with more selected. Cleared existing data. All still ends up in one column.

Eventually got it to work by pasting a single column at a time.

[riball]

In my opinion, the lack of functionality within tables is the biggest drawback to moving over to use AP rather than PP.

It is all very well introducing fancy graphic tools, but this is a really a word processor and should have all the tools for handling text and tables as well as useful add-ons for mail merge etc.

 

[garrettm30]

16 hours ago, riball said:

It is all very well introducing fancy graphic tools, but this is a really a word processor

This is really a desktop publishing (layout) app, not a word processor. There are missing features indeed, particularly as we still are still on the very first release, but it would be helpful to manage our expectations with an understanding of what Publisher is, and word processor isn't it.

(This is a side note, not intended as a comment on the validity of the feature request in the thread.)

[riball]

My apologies. Word processor was not the correct terminology.

What I would expect is to be able to edit text and tables within the application.  At present the lack of table functionality means that they often need to be created in another application and then imported as a picture.

With the integration of the other Affinity apps so that they can now be called from each other, it seems out of line with the implied aim of making this a complete package, to have to go to other apps for the more basic text/table functions.  I would hope (in time) that I can go to AP and prepare all my content: text, images, tables, photos, in one package.  I would hope, also in time, that this could include mail merge so that I can include variable fields tailored for each recipient. 

I wait to see.

[zincan]

Absolutely.

 

From Apple Numbers only Function’s result into table cell.

I create Calendar on Numbers. Because this application uses  database functions for typing day integers.

I mean a one cell input “1”, and next cell input “= Former cell + 1” or “= Above cell + 7”. And copy to horizontal or vertical cells. These work input automatically days in cell.

Just now copy and paste work is as image.

Thanks Affinity team 

[AVC]

Sorry for bringing up an old topic - but this is frustrating me no end. I have a big spreadsheet that I am trying to transfer into a table in Designer/Publisher. Copying and pasting the table data results in all the fields being placed into the one cell. Nothing seems to work!

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, AVC said:

Sorry for bringing up an old topic - but this is frustrating me no end. I have a big spreadsheet that I am trying to transfer into a table in Designer/Publisher. Copying and pasting the table data results in all the fields being placed into the one cell. Nothing seems to work!

You may have to select more than one cell before pasting.

[Loquos]

On 4/15/2020 at 6:44 PM, AVC said:

Sorry for bringing up an old topic - but this is frustrating me no end. I have a big spreadsheet that I am trying to transfer into a table in Designer/Publisher. Copying and pasting the table data results in all the fields being placed into the one cell. Nothing seems to work!

Going to assume you're trying to copy and paste from something other than Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice. I noticed this problem when trying to copy and paste from a Google Spreadsheet. However, there is a workaround. Save out the spreadsheet as an .xls - then open it up in LibreOffice, select all the rows and columns you want to transfer. (Make sure you have the same rows/columns ready in your Affinity Publisher file.) Copy & paste.

At least for Google Spreadsheets, this works. Must be something in the Google Spreadsheets online coding that doesn't currently play well with Publisher. This same trick should work if you load the document in Excel. LibreOffice is free and is what I use if I'm not online to use Google Suite.

[Richard786]

Does saving the spreadsheet as a PDF and then opening (not importing) the PDF in Pub work?

It did for me once, but the table was quite small, about four columns by eight rows, as I recall.

If it does, you can then copy and paste the table into your layout and restyle it as required.

[AVC]

The only way I got this to work was by copying the table data into TextEdit as Plain Text, then copy and paste from there. This method worked correctly for me.

[Thomahawk]

I really don't know for what writing all this suggestions here and Affinity does nothing about it.

More than a year ago I complained about the incompatibility with Excel and it is still a mess. It is not possible to copy a group of cells and place it into Publisher tables. It just does not work. I need to get one row at a time, and even then, it adds rows every time and messes up the whole table and after a while I end up with a table that is not editable anymore.

It`s even worse now then a year before. At least it was possible to copy row by row into word and then from there copy into publisher. Now, not even this works because at the second I copy into Publisher, publisher is gone! Crash.

Only thing that seems to work now is copy the whole excel table into Word and then copy from there into Publisher.

Any other Layout software can handle copy paste from Excel. Why is Affinity not able to?

OS X 10.14.6 / Publisher 1.8.4

[Bradders 567]

Has there been any progress or resolution of this fundamental issue?

[kamanderside]

On 11/11/2020 at 4:15 PM, Bradders 567 said:

Has there been any progress or resolution of this fundamental issue?

I've had luck with it today - I'm running Publisher 1.8.6 on Mac Mojave (lol I know) and successfully copied multiple cells from Excel (.xlsx file) into a table (more than 1 cell selected).

[Stephan Swanepoel]

I think I found a workaround.

*This method works with: MS Word Document with Tables; Uploaded to Google Docs and still used in Google Docs as a Docx File.

**This method does not work on "Pre-Formatted" Tables - but keep your Pre-Formatted Tables.

1. Draw a new Temporary Table. Number of cells does not matter.
2. Deselect the Table and Select it again. Making sure its ONLY selected. Not in Edit Mode (ie Without the Transparent Grey Column and Row Headers)
3. Copy your Data from source tables.
4. In Affinity Publisher - with the Table Selected as in step 3 - click in the Menu Bar under:
   • Edit >>>
     •  Paste Inside
5. Copy data from the Temporary Table and past it inside the Pre-Formatted using:
   • Edit >>>
     • Paste Without Format
6. Hope for the best.

Can anyone test this?

I'm kinda chuffed at my Saturday solution. **Dusts off shoulders.

[cmyk]

This still seems to be fubar. I cannot paste cells from google docs nor numbers to tables in Affinity publisher.
This is such a basic feature. Hard to believe, this is still not tackled.

[AffinityFett]

This just worked for me: Create an empty text box somewhere in the Affinity Publisher document and paste the copied data there.

Then copy the pasted data from the text box into the table (selecting more than one cell).

Edited May 27, 2021 by AffinityFett
further instruction

[Leaving-Adobe]

Hopefully we will once be able to maintain the format of cells in which ne data is being pasted in

[riball]

I have tried both the work arounds above (text box and temporary table) and in both cases Publisher crashes when I try to copy the data into a table.

The data I am using is from an Excel spreadsheet.

[Leaving-Adobe]

Unfortenately you are right! I tested it with just one row - only with this tiny amount of data it doesn't crash..