From the course: InDesign Secrets
294 Adjust table strokes in Table Settings - InDesign Tutorial
From the course: InDesign Secrets
294 Adjust table strokes in Table Settings
- [Instructor] Here is a super simple tip that every InDesign user who creates tables needs to know but very few do. Here's the problem that I'm trying to solve, I want to set the weight and color for all the strokes between the columns and rows as quickly as possible and preferably, I'd like to save them inside of a table style so that I could apply them quickly later, right? But, unfortunately, the way that InDesign works, it looks like you have to do this by creating cell styles and cell styles are great, don't get me wrong, but they're kind of annoying, especially when all you want to do is change all the strokes in your table. So, I'm here to tell you that you can do this without cell styles just by changing the table settings itself. Okay, let me show you how. First, I need to place my text cursor inside the table, of course, so I'll simply double click inside of a cell to switch to the type tool. Now, I'm going to go up to the Table menu and I'll choose Table Options and then Table Setup. Now, inside the Table Options dialog box, you'll see the section called Table Border, but this only controls the strokes on the outside of the table, the four exterior sides of the table. For example, I could make those disappear by changing the color to None. Now, this table won't have any strokes on the outside edges but what about the interior strokes? Well, up here at the top of the dialog box, you can see that there's a feature called Row Strokes but the only thing we see in here is a way to change the alternating pattern. For example, every other row, every second row, and so on. Same thing is true in the Column Strokes section. Every other column, every second column, and so on. Now alternating patterns are cool but it doesn't seem that helpful if you want all of your strokes to be the same, right? Like, I want all of my strokes to be three points and green but this feature only lets me set every other column. Well, the solution is actually very simple, though, I have to admit that it took me a long time before I realized it. All you need to do is choose one of these alternating patterns. For example, every other column, and then set the first and second column to be exactly the same. Like, here, I'll set the weight to three points and I'll make it green and then over here on the right side, I'll do exactly the same thing. Three points and green. Now that was just at column strokes. I could also change the row strokes as well, those are the horizontal lines. I'll come over here and choose every other row and then I'll make this three points and green and then once again, three points and green. Now remember, this does not change the strokes on the outside of the table, that's controlled over here inside Table Setup in the Table Border section. So, great, I have changed all the strokes and columns inside the table and I'm going to go ahead and click OK and see how it looks. There we go. Green, three point strokes, throughout the entire thing. It's a little bit hard to see here because I can still see my frame edges, so I'm going to go up to the View menu and come down to Extras and I'll turn off frame edges by choosing Hide Frame Edges. There we go, that looks great. Of course, I'm going to want to apply this to a bunch of tables in my document, so I better turn this into a table style. To do that, I'll open the Window menu, choose Styles, and then choose Table Styles. Let's create a new table style by going to the Table Styles panel menu and choose New Table Style. Now, all I need to do is give it a name. I'll call this my happy style. You can call it anything you want, of course, and now I'm going to click OK and apply that style to this table by simply clicking on it. Great, there we go, I have now applied this style to this table. Now the next time I want to apply that style to a table like this one down here, let's go ahead and scroll this up, there we go, now, I simply click inside that table, come back over to the Table Styles panel, and click once on my new style and it applies all that format into the style. So, again, I set up all of those strokes with a table style and without using any cell styles. You don't have to use cell styles when making a table style and, in this case, it makes formatting the table even easier if you don't.
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Contents
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229 Batch converting ID files to current version with the Book panel6m 9s
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230 Getting around InDesign limitations6m 46s
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(Locked)
231 Creating better callout lines with effects and object styles5m 47s
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232 Swapping column and row information in tables6m 9s
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(Locked)
233 Making bigger text link targets4m 52s
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161 Keeping page numbers on top of master items3m 55s
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162 Adding automatic currency symbols in a table cell or before text3m 50s
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163 Make a pop-up footnote for your ebook3m 48s
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164 Deleting tabs at the beginning of paragraphs and applying a paragraph style3m 10s
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165 Five InDesign Presentation tips6m 28s
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111 Packaging images on the pasteboard3m 32s
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112 Automatically updating figure references for books6m 9s
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113 Adding Tool Tips to your form fields in InDesign3m 21s
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114 Setting poetry, flush left, center on longest line3m 54s
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115 Use bookmarks to navigate long documents in production4m 57s
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107 Using the same keyboard shortcut for two different commands with the Context feature5m 22s
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108 Making a text highlighter3m 33s
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109 Updating an interactive PDF without losing work done in Acrobat5m 30s
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110 Adding custom text at the beginning of each line automatically4m
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089 Three great Object Styles for any designer8m 1s
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090 Choosing alpha channel image transparency2m 25s
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091 Adding and reading metadata for InDesign files3m 25s
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092 Adding ALT tags to your images6m 59s
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093 How to Place & Link a text frame's text but not its formatting7m 4s
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094 Setting the baseline position of a caption2m 39s
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051 Five things that should be in every new file5m 19s
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052 Forcing EPUB page breaks with invisible objects6m 21s
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053 Understanding component information6m 39s
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054 Creating running heads using section markers4m 16s
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055 Making a font with InDesign using the IndyFont script5m 20s
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056 Finding where that color is used7m 17s
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047 Specifying an exact amount of space between objects5m 17s
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048 Fixing last lines that are too short8m 16s
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049 Creating web graphics from your InDesign artwork7m 20s
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050 Using “No Language” to suppress unwanted hyphenation, spell-checking, and smart quotes2m 48s
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037 Updating a linked table without losing formatting5m 18s
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038 Creating electronic sticky notes4m 49s
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039 Moving master page items to the top layer for visibility2m 48s
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040 Five guide tricks that will impress your coworkers6m 18s
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041 Letting InDesign add the diacritics4m 21s
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042 Using single-cell table cells for custom paragraph formatting6m 2s
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027 Creating running heads using variables5m 1s
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028 Live Caption tips and tricks8m 3s
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029 Making professional drop caps10m 37s
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030 Making two-state buttons in interactive documents5m 5s
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031 Moving pages from one document to another3m 15s
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032 Wrapping bulleted text around a curve5m 58s
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007 Selecting through and into objects using cmd-click and Select Above/Below5m 46s
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008 Some great tips and tricks for the Swatches panel9m 40s
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009 Saving down for backward compatibility with INX and IDML5m 54s
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010 Using the INX and IDML formats to fix problems4m 46s
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