Easier Table Fill and Stroke Formatting
A lot of new InDesign users (or experienced InDesign users new to working with tables) think that the only way to customize table fills and strokes is via those monstrous Table Options and Cell Options dialog boxes that you access via the Table menu or the Table palette menu.
After all, they have entire panels dedicated to Fill and Strokes of table elements. But unless you need a table-centric sort of feature (like Alternating Fill Color), you can just use the palettes you’re familiar with, like Swatches, Stroke and the Control palette.
To apply a fill color to a table element, select what you want (cell, row, column or the whole table), make sure the Fill icon is “in front” of the Stroke icon in the Tools or Swatches palette, and click on a Swatch name. The selection fills with the color you clicked on. You can adjust the color’s tint from the Tint slider in the palette, too.
To apply a stroke color, use the Swatches palette again, this time making sure the Stroke icon is front of the Fill icon before you click on a color swatch. As long as that Stroke icon is in front, you can change a selection’s stroke weight and style via the Control palette or the Stroke palette.
In fact, when you’ve made a selection in a table, both the Control and the Stroke palette show you a little display of the strokes that your selection will be applied to, just like in the Cell Options dialog box.
Stroke palette with column selected
As in that dialog box, they’re all active (colored blue) by default. Click on the ones you don’t want your formatting to affect (they turn grey) before you make your formatting changes.
My favorite trick when setting which strokes to affect is: Triple-click on one of them in the little cell proxy area to turn them all on or off. For example, if you just want to affect the bottom stroke, triple-click to deselect all of them, then click once on the bottom stroke to turn that one on.
Yup. Also, you can double-click any outside lines to select just those — the inside lines get deselected. The reverse also works — double-click inside lines to deselect the outside lines.
Dang, we should’ve saved this topic for a podcast!
But wait…there’s more!
You can select or deselect different combinations of proxy strokes by Command-clicking the point where they meet. For instance…Command-click where the interior proxy strokes meet at the center and you simultaneously select (or deselect) both the horizontal and vertical inside strokes.
Similarly, Command-clicking the point where the bottom and right exterior proxy strokes meet selects (or deselects) the bottom horizontal and right vertical proxy strokes at the same time.
I won’t go through every combination, but it also works where, for example, the interior horizontal meets the exterior vertical, and so on… Basically, any combination you can think of where two points on the proxy meet.
I”m not a PC guy, so I can only assume that this works using Control-click in Windows.
Thanks, Michael, but I think it’s even easier than that: You don’t need to hold down the Command/Ctrl modifier. Just click at the intersection to turn both segments on/off. Great point, though.
It seems the Command key wasn’t necessary in CS1 either. I stand happily corrected. My left thumb and poor, put-upon Command key thank you both.
Annoyed with difficulty of placing text into pre-formatted tables. Seem to need to place table, then format, manually. So much for pre-formatting. Found WoodWing SmartStyles to be very helpful in formatting tables (does text too). Free 30 day trial.
I cannot get my strokes to look like I want! Is there some other place formatting is set apart from Cell options? It looks almost like styles with hidden formatting causing the plus sign. Only I can’t clear it.
Wynand, I’m not sure what you mean by “[it looks like ] hidden formatting causing the plus sign” in regards to your strokes. I’m guessing that you’re trying to make a stroke look a certain way and it’s ignoring you?
Try using the method I described in the post: Use the Stroke palette and the Swatches palette instead of Cell Options. For example, select the entire table and set the Stroke weight to 0; that’ll clear out *all* strokes and let you start fresh.
Also, there are some formatting commands that just can’t be applied to tables at all. You can’t “add space” in between cells, for example, as you can with an HTML table.
If you’re still having trouble, feel free to take a screen shot and describe what you’re trying to do in an email to me and David (at info@indesignsecrets.com).
I want the top row of cells in a table to have a line above and below it and the last row of cells to have one below only. After reading your advice yesterday I did switch to the Strokes and Swatches palettes. It works much better! Thanks.
One problem I have now is that cell borders appear in the fill colour and some in black. No doubt I have finger trouble, but I learn fast, thanks to your excellent help and your book is always within reach! I’ll try your suggestion tonight.
Hi Anne-Marie, I got it to format properly by clearing all srokes on the tool palette. I then selected the cells and added strokes with the the strokes palette. I got what I wanted in the end. Thanks for the help.
I’m a beginner trying to learn table formatting. My problem: the table rows are inflexibly widely spaced apart because of the default slug setting. When the type is 7-pt., e.g., I want a baseline-to-baseline measure of 9 pts, not 13, which is as close as I can get it! Any way to close up those rows? Thank you.
I retract the above question, with apologies. I posed it in the wrong forum. Besides, I now have the solution: select the table, click on Table - Cell Options - Text, and change the top and bottom cell insets.
I’m having difficulty turning off cell strokes. When I display the table object, the boxes don’t have a stroke (which is correct), but when I use the object out of the library and it’s filled with data, there is a stroke on the cell. I’m also having the reverse problem - I put a stroke around several cells in my table object and it looks fine, until I use the object, when only half of the strokes are appearing. What’s happening? I’ve used the above advice to clear out (or apply) the strokes, but it’s not working. Thanks.