QuarkXPress to Adobe InDesign CS4 Conversion Guide

Tables
You can easily create sophisticated tables in InDesign. You can create
your own tables from scratch, convert imported text into tables, or place
styled Word and Excel tables. Tables can flow across multiple pages for easy
editing and automatically include headers and footers. Extensive formatting
options, including alternating fill and stroke controls, enable you to fine-tune
the final design of your tables, and you can create table styles and cell styles to
quickly and consistently format tables and cells.
With InDesign, you don’t use a table
tool to create a table. Instead, tables
are always anchored in a text frame.
To make a new table, select the Type
tool, place the Type cursor inside a
frame or create a new text frame, and
choose Table > Insert Table.
The Insert Table dialog box that
appears lets you specify the number
of rows and columns. However,
you can later make the table larger
or smaller by placing the text cursor
inside the table and using the options
in the Table panel.
By default, the inserted table fills the
width of the container text frame.
If you then make the frame smaller,
the table remains visible outside the
frame. Tables flow with surrounding
text, just like anchored objects. Each
cell in an InDesign table is similar to
a text frame of its own, into which
you can place text, graphics, and
other tables.
You can adjust each column width
and row height in a table by dragging
the dividers with the Type tool.
Converting Text to Tables
InDesign provides a number of ways
to turn text into tables and tables
into text. For example, you can
import tab-delimited text files from
a spreadsheet or database, select the
text with the Type tool, and choose
Table > Convert Text To Table.
Importing Tables
You can import a table from a
Microsoft Word or Excel document
like any other text file. Select Show
Import Options as you import the
data to fine-tune the imported data.
If you copy tabular data from Word
or Excel, you can paste it into an
InDesign table by placing the text
cursor in the upper leftmost cell you
want to populate, and then pressing
Esc (to select the cell itself) and
choosing Edit > Paste.
Threading Tables
Because tables are anchored in
text, InDesign lets you thread them
across multiple text frames, making
it easy to work with lengthy tabular
information. You can set up running
header and footer rows that appear
at the top or bottom of the table on
each page. To convert a normal row
28 Adobe InDesign CS4 | Conversion Guide