Import a landscape table to a portrait file

Arnis, Ken, Art, Sheila,

Thank you so much for all your feedback/suggestions; it was extremely helpful. I'm sometimes amazed how quickly people respond to help others...and with great instructions.

I'll know where to go next time I require assistance. Again, thank you very much for your time and quick responses. I'm slowly learning how Master Pages work and look forward to learning more...

Gary

Gary, if you're juggling multiple landscape tables, especially tables that span multiple pages, the situation changes a bit from the simpler short single file scenario.

The easiest way to deal with long and multiple landscape tables is to create a new template file that has landscape pages in it. Set it up with your (modified) headers and footers.

Then use the landscape file to create new content files that you can insert into your book at the appropriate places. Yes, you may have to slice and dice your portrait chapter(s) into fragments if you need to interleave the landscape files. But you can set up your book file, in which they are all component files, so that they appear in finished form as if they are a single chapter.

Art

Sheila,

Thanks for the feedback. Your first suggestion did not work for me, so I applied your second method. It seemed to have worked; however, I cannot revise the table/text once the table is rotated. Is this because once the table is rotated (using Graphics > rotate) it is treated as a graphic?

Also, the table I need to create (later today) will be at least two pages, maybe three. So I did a test case and noticed the second and third pages did not rotate. I then had to rotate the third page separately, as the second page did not work.

Any thoughts about this is appreciated, or perhaps additional steps to remedy pages of the table that do not rotate.

Thanks again for your help.

Gary

Here's a start.<br />Easiest method:<br /><br />-- make a new, empty FM chapter. Insert a blank table.<br /><br />-- highlight the table cells (including the heading row(s) if you have them). In the Graphics menu, select Rotate. Choose the preferred angle.<br /><br />Now play around with putting text in the table, and see if it meets your requirements as far as layout goes, how the title works, etc etc.<br /><br />Now try copying your existing landscape table from the other chapter and pasting it into this test file, to see what happens with the rotation. (to copy the table, use your cursor to highlight the table anchor (the upside down capital "T") which will highlight the whole table, do Ctl-c to copy to the clipboard, and Ctl-v to paste).<br /><br />Second method:<br />Instead of rotating the table cells, try rotating the body page text frame (not the master page, the body page). <br /><br />-- in a test FM file that already has some content on a few pages, insert a blank table somewhere in the "middle" so that you have at least a page before and a page after the table page. Add some content in the cells just for test purposes, make the table several rows and columns.<br /><br />-- Hold Control down. With your cursor, click on the text frame around the table -- again, this is on the body page, not the master.<br /><br />-- in the Graphics menu, click Rotate<br /><br />Now test how the rotated page works with the other pages before/after it, especially if you add or remove content before the table itself, so you see how the rotated page moves (or doesn't move) when content before it is changed.<br /><br />Also, test how you can (or can't) change content in the rotated table.<br /><br />Those are two of the most direct ways, but there are gotchas with both approaches, it all depends on what your requirements are, so there are still more approaches depending on how much editing of the content that you need to do.<br /><br />[edit] One big issue to keep in mind is that landscape tables sometimes have to change their orientation depending on whether the document is single or double-sided, so the layout of the document may dictate what method ends up being the easiest for you to maintain in the long run. <br /><br />Let us know how you get on -- rotated tables can be a bit of challenge in some circumstances <g>

Kenneth,

re: Is there any reason you can't have a landscape table in your portrait file?

Not that I'm aware of. How would I create a landscape table in an existing portrait file?

My apologies in advance for the potential simplicity of this issue.

Thanks,
Gary

OK, here are a couple ways:

You can just copy in that table, select all of it, and rotate it (use the rotate tool on the graphics menu) without changing the master page.

You can also create a landscape Master page and invoke that to hold the table. The only drawback is that when you add or delete text ahead of that particular page, you're likely to change the pagination of the chapter.

If you can get by with editing the table in your original file, it may be easier to generate a PDF of the table and import that as a referenced graphic, which you rotate.

Hi Sheila,

Thanks for the reply; much appreciated. I did do a search and found the link you provided, but I'm not sure that's the right solution for my situation, which is as follows:

I have an existing Landscape file that contains a landscape table. I want to import/add or copy/paste the landscape table into a second FM file, and this file is portrait.

I would love to hear your suggestion(s) if your schedule allows.

Thanks again,
Gary

Gary, there are a couple of ways to go, depending on what you need to be able to do with the document in the future.

Before reinventing the wheel on instructions, have you searched the forum for "landscape table" or something like that -- here's a thread, for example:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b50cad/2

[oops, didn't mean this to sound like RTFM, but the forum search is an often overlooked treasure trove of Good Stuff.]