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• • February 17, 2011 at 11:44 am #58736
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Okay, Table Pros, I have a quick one for you.

    I'm publishing the new edition of a 1,000 page textbook that was originally published with Quark XPress, so this is the first time I've gotten heavily into the IDCS5 table functions.

    The eyedropper method of copying and painting styles onto another paragraph doesn't seem to work within tables (probably because of the table-in-a-text-box model).

    Is there a way of directly copying attributes from one cell or piece of text in a table to another, or a way to past-and-match-style?

    I know I could define a style, and apply the style. But we're at the design stage and would prefer not to start making styles just yet. (We will if we have to.)

    Thanks in advance for saving me the time to track this down myself.

    Tom

  • February 17, 2011 at 12:16 pm #58737
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Please be clear about what attributes you want to copy. Are you talking text or cell formatting?

    InDesign's eyedropper tool does work in tables, as far as I can tell. Select the text you want to apply formatting to (change), select the eyedropper tool, then click on the text you want to copy formatting from. For cell formatting (fill, etc.), select the cell(s) you want to change (press Esc to select the frame instead of the cell), then switch to eyedropper tool and click on the cell that has the formatting you want to copy.

  • February 17, 2011 at 1:43 pm #58738
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Thanks.

    I'm trying to copy text attributes in this case. Sorry for the confusion.

    On closer inspection, copying attributes does work as you note. I was hoping it would be simple operator error, and indeed that's the case.

    The problem I was having was that I was selecting text too quickly and ID was jumping to select the cell instead of the text. So I was always affecting the cell attributes. I'm using a tablet, which is a bit twitchy on the ID CS5 interface.

    The mouse does a better job on this function, though not so much for me to switch back and forth between devices.

    Thanks for the quick answer. It confirmed I was just doing something incorrectly.

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