Trying to replicate sports tables

[Phil Creighton]

Hi! 

I am looking at switching our weekly newspaper over from InDesign to Publisher. I've managed to successfully replicate most styles and pages and a test PDF would print perfectly. So I'm confident that this is going to happen. 

But there's one thing that eludes me at the moment and it's one that I need to find a workaround to ensure we can make the switch ... sports tables. 

Current workflow is thus: 

• Tables updated in Excel and saved
• Indesign document opened and tables update
• Clean-up formatting and bold up local team names (as per below)

The Indesign tables are set up to import the latest copy from Excel, and formatted so that every other row is tinted. It's all automatic because of the way in which the tables are set up. 

I can't figure out how to achieve similar in APub.

• It won't import Excel - workaround - cut and paste from Excel
• Can't see how to set tables up so every other row is tinted
• Struggling to set column widths and row heights manually with cut and paste

I'm still learning my way around APub, and have managed to just about solve the widths/row heights but the importing and set up is crucial to ensure we can switch away from Indesign
Any thoughts and advice welcome! 

[stokerg]

Hi Phil Creighton and Welcome to the Forums,

On 6/30/2019 at 10:10 AM, Phil Creighton said:

Can't see how to set tables up so every other row is tinted

Select a row by clicking on the number 1 down the left of the table and then pick a colour from the Colour Studio and that row will be filled with the colour.  Just repeat the process as needed.  Once you've done this once, you can save this Format using the Tablet Formats option on the Context Toolbar and then re-apple the same style to a future table.

Other than copy and paste, i'm not aware of another method to get a table in from Excel.

[Phil Creighton]

Thanks for your reply - and your welcome. 

I'm hugely excited about the potential of APub - I've produced two full pages of this week's paper in it and the readers will be hard pressed to know which ones they were! 

There's some work to be done before switching over completely, but I'm hoping that by the autumn the paper will be produced full-time in APub. 

 

I'll have a go at creating the table style. When the football season starts there's about 20 tables that need to be updated each week. If I have to do them manually via cut and paste, well, that'll be a pain! But if I can get the tables set up correctly via the Table Formats panel and the cut and paste correctly pulls in the text but not the Excel formatting, we could be OK. 

Got a month to find out!