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• • April 8, 2016 at 10:15 am #83848
    Guy Ivie

    Member

    I’m new to cell & table styles, and clearly am not doing something right, despite following along with David Blatner in a Lynda.com course.

    I have paragraph styles called Table Text and Table Heading; they use a different typeface than the rest of the text, so it’s easy to see the change when the right style is applied.

    I created cell styles called table body (which uses the paragraph style Table Text) and table heading, which uses the paragraph style Table Heading. The cell style table heading also applies a 1.5 pt bottom border.

    I created a table style called TPG Tables. It applies a 1.5 pt outer border, with .5 pt inside borders. Under Cell Styles, I selected the cell style table heading for Header Rows, and table body for Body Rows.

    I typed some tab-delimited text — it had my Body Text style applied, which is not the same as Table Text, and no character styles — selected it, and converted it to a table, first selecting TPG Tables from the Table Styles pull-down. I ended up with a table that had a 1.5 pt outside border, .5 pt inside borders, and text that still had the Body Text style applied. I was expecting the table style to apply the cell styles.

    I repeated the process, this time leaving Basic Table in the pull-down, and then selecting the new table and applying TPG Tables. Same result: no cell styles applied. I selected the top row, converted it to a header, and got a 1.5 pt border along the bottom, as needed, but the text is still Body Text.

    Why doesn’t the table style apply the cell styles as expected? Or am I expecting the wrong behavior?

  • April 8, 2016 at 11:38 am #83850
    Ari Singer

    Member

    I noticed that some settings in InDesign (such as Table styles, or footnote formatting options) are merely ‘recommendations’, and get very ‘intimidated’ by other styles.

    For example when you set up in the footnote options a paragraph style to use, when you create a new blank footnote it will use that footnote, but if you copy styled text into that footnote, it will stay with the source style.

    I’m afraid the same happens with table styles. They merely ‘recommend’ what style to use in a new blank cell but they get ‘intimidated’ by an incoming style. So to fix that, select all body rows and option/alt-click on the Body Text cell style to force the style change.

  • April 8, 2016 at 12:07 pm #83851
    Guy Ivie

    Member

    Thanks for the advice, Ari. I already found that I apparently have to either apply the correct paragraph styles by hand before creating the table, or select the cells and click “Clear attributes not defined by style.” I have to say, though, this leaves me scratching my head and wondering, “If I have to apply the paragraph styles myself, or clear the unwanted attributes of the original paragraph style after apply the table style, then why bother with the cell styles or table styles for anything other than controlling the borders and stand-offs?”.

    And why did it seem to work in David’s course lesson? He imported an Excel table, applied the table style, and the cells took on the correct styles… or it looked like that’s what happened.

  • April 8, 2016 at 12:19 pm #83852
    Ari Singer

    Member

    The option/alt+click method is basically the shortcut to applying the style and clearing the overrides.

    The reason it worked in David’s course is probably because the text had no style applied to them as opposed to yours which has the Body Text style applied to them.

  • April 8, 2016 at 1:25 pm #83853
    Guy Ivie

    Member

    Hmmm… I think I’ll experiment and see what happens if the text has only [Basic Paragraph] applied. Will report back.

  • April 8, 2016 at 1:33 pm #83854
    Guy Ivie

    Member

    Yep, that did it. I’ll have to make sure that incoming table material is mapped either to the table paragraph styles or to [Basic Paragraph]. However, I think it would be a good idea if Adobe reworked precedence on this so that paragraph/cell styles invoked by a table style have the final say.

    Thanks for your help, Ari.

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