Select a Table Cell (no, the text!)
It’s easy to select two or more cells in an InDesign table, right? You just drag the Text tool over them all. But it’s kind of a hassle to select a single cell in the table, don’t you think? Here’s the secret: Place the cursor in the cell and press the Esc key. That selects the cell itself. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
By the way, if you press Esc again, all the text in the cell is selected. The Esc key toggles back and forth between selecting the cell and its text. Cool, no?
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A couple of additional table keyboard shortcuts:
command / selects a cell.
command 3 selects all of the cells in a row.
command option 3 selects all of the cells in a column.
that’s really quite handy. James, would you know what’s the PC equivalent for these shortcuts?
Also, my IDCS2 tends to lag when I toggle between “Selection” and “Text”. Or is it because I’m working on a long document (approx 400pp)?
tricia – the ‘Ctrl’ key is the equivalent to ‘command’ for the PC.
Also, if you’re in InDesign, you should look at using Book feature and split the 400 p doc into chapters. It’s much easier to work with and more flexible document. Reduced any lag time and creates a much more solid work environment with less likelihood of corruption.
And who knows how to select ONLY text in single column which contains a few cells (ONLY text in it)?
Please help.
I’ve just figured out how to do that Caroline! In the swatches palette there are two buttons at the top. One’s a square – ‘formatting affects container’ and the other’s a ‘T’ – ‘Formatting affects text’. Annoyingly this isn’t mentioned in any help guide I’ve found.
This saved me so much time. Thanks for the tip!
This is very helpful! Thank You.
Andy, yes, this is how you apply a color swatch to text inside a frame or a cell (instead of the frame or cell itself). But it sounds like Caroline was trying to select the text itself. I would need to know more about what she’s trying to do…
I see these posts are quite old and wondered if its now possible to select the text only with a column – I need to select all text in a column and paste into a pre-styled table without bringing in cell styles.
Fran: I haven’t used this script in a long time, but perhaps it will work for you? https://creativepro.com/copy-data-from-one-table-into-another-with-poptabfmclip.php
Just wondering how to select mulitple cells from different colums and rows. Any help?
That’s not possible with InDesign. Do them one at a time.
Is there a way to “GREP” empty table cells? I see the end of story symbol but that selects every cell (one at a time). I would like to find empty table cells and replace it with it n/a and I have to go through 200+ tables, please help!
In order to flag my part numbers for inclusion in an index, I have to select the “contents only” of a cell with the text cursor and then use CTRL+SHFT+ALT+[ to execute the command. Sometimes we need to do hundreds of these. Is there any way to select “contents only” of multiple cells?
@Ted and @Douglas: Sorry, I don’t think there is any way to do these things.
I want to do the same as Caroline, select ONLY the text in multiple cells in the same column. Surely that must be possible? I do NOT want to select the whole cell, ONLY the text. Selecting text in one cell is no problem but I’d like to select text in several cells. It’s a hassle to copy the text one cell at a time.
Anyone please?
@Lina: You cannot really do that. You could, however, select the cells, then paste them into a new text frame, then convert the table to text (under the Table menu) and then select the text. Hassle, but faster than copying and pasting one at a time.
It seems to be working if you do it the way Andy described above? I selected all the cells in a column and then went to the swatches palette and selected the T at the top and then I can edit or erase all text in all cells without erasing the cells themselves. Thanks!
@Lina: Yes, you can apply formatting to multiple cells at the same time (as long as the cells are next to each other), or delete the contents, etc… but in your earlier post you said you wanted to copy the text out of all the cells at the same time. That’s different.
Yes, I realise that. I have to do that your way which is a hassle but works. But this second thing is something I’ve been wantintg to do too so at least it’s a little victory ;-)
I can’t select the table which overlap with another table on another column
@Edwin: It can be very tricky selecting cells like that. It is sometimes easier to edit cells in the Story Editor. Or, consider putting the tables on different layers so you can isolate them more easily (for example, by locking one layer)
THANK YOUUUU!!!!!