This article is excerpted from the August/September 2007 issue of InDesign Magazine, #19.
Buy this issue or subscribe to InDesign Magazine.
Just as there are guidelines for polite behavior at dinner, there are rules to follow when designing tables that make them easier for your audience to comprehend. This article helps you understand what makes good tables effective and how to apply those principles to your own work. If you like what you see in the article, go to the last page of the PDF for a special discount on an InDesign Magazine subscription.
Click on the link to the PDF “Mind Your Table Manners” to open the PDF file in your Web browser. You can also download the PDF to your machine for later viewing and printing.
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This article was last modified on January 9, 2022
This article was first published on November 7, 2007
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Thank you all!!
I read your comments instead of the article and successfully figured out tables in less than 30 m.
I hate adobe as much as the people above. I try to MOVE a text box using the cursor, just like in ANY other program EXCEPT Adobe. I have to use the arrow buttons to move it? how the HELL do I copy and paste text boxes where I want? The stupid cursor wont stay in the box in my table where I click it. The SIMPLEST things in other apps are IMPOSSIBLE IN ADOBE. STUPID design. It pulled in my table which I brought in as a form, and promptly randomly put strange text boxes in random places, it was USELESS.
Um. Anon, this isn’t a tutorial on how to make tables. It’s how to design tables.
I feel your pain Anony. After re-reading the seemingly endless pages on how to style your table, I saw one little bit explaining how to actually create the buggers.
1) Create a text box.
2) Click in the text box to get your flashing cursor.
3) From top menu Table>Insert Table
Woot. Now on to the next disaster…
I am growing to truly detest Adobe. Is there nothing like a simple user guide where I don’t have to go through endless screens when all I need is a simple layout of how to perform a simple funtion.
After conscutive disasters that wiped out my software and endless, pointless conversation with polite peoples in India whose English appears on a par with my French– that would be NOT up to par for techical support,I bought the upgrade. I got
that odiously hypocritical insert about having no user guide BECAUSE THEY WANT TO PROTECT THE PLANET’S RESOURCES.! How stupid do they think people are? I don’t want ratings of an article about tables. I want to find out how to create one. I hate you. I’ll have to buy a user guide published by someone else. I don’t mind that so much as the waste of my time when I try to get some kind of instructions from Adobe.
I used to like them. Now I hate them. Maybe Mac will upgrade their layout programs.
Wow, now I can use tables. No one said we should be in the type tool or click into the text box and get the flashing curser before. I hate instructions that assume you know those unspoken things. I would never think making tables would be a text tool function. I would think it would be the select tool or some specialized table tool.