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C
carol mcgann
Inspiring
December 19, 2021
Question

How do I make table cell borders visible in design view, DW CC2021?

  • December 19, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 3297 views

I have moved to DW CC from CS6. In design view in CS6, table cells showed dashed borders, so it was clear where they were. While I didn't want actual borders in the finished product, the dashed view was very helpful for things like seeing cells to merge them, and where to put the cursor to add data. In DW CC, my tables do not delineate cells in any visible way, the conent is just "floating in space". Is there a way to get the cell borders to show without putting actual visible borders on them?

 

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1 reply

Nancy OShea
Nancy OShea
Community Expert
December 20, 2021

Are you in Live view or Design view?

Use Ctrl + Shift + F11 to toggle views.

 

For best results, give your table a border of 1 while editing.

<table width="80%" border="1"> 

Change border value to 0 when you're done.

 

Also turn on Visual Aids from your View Menu (see screenshot.)

 

 

 

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
C
carol mcgannAuthor
Inspiring
December 20, 2021

Unfortunately, "table borders" in design view options has been checked all along, and apparently doesn't do what I need. I am trying to get this to happen wtthout using code because my husband does most of the making of pages, and I don't want him anywhere near code if the page is ever to work again... So adding a temporary border won't do it, but could work well for others.

I have discovered that if you hold the control key and hover over cells, they get red borders, and you can select one or more and merge them, for example, or at least see where they are, and I think that may be enough if there isn't another solution.

Nancy OShea
Nancy OShea
Community Expert
December 21, 2021

I don't think I quite understand the question, but the tables we have are historical race results. They will not ever change. When a new race happens, we make a new table and enter the new data. So data manipulation is needed at the time of entry (which is when I would want to see the cell borders, which is what started this question). My bringing up the number was just to say that my table usage isn't/can't be minimal, and any site-wide change in data handling was just not going to happen.


I'll take that as a NO, you don't have a database-driven site.  So you're manually managing data within Dreamweaver which is a lot like dancing with a 10,000 lb gorilla.  😥 

 

Dreamweaver can only display table borders when borders are present:  either a value in the HTML  border attribute or a sitewide CSS style like this:

 

th, td {
  border-bottom: 1px solid #DDD;
}

https://www.w3schools.com/css/tryit.asp?filename=trycss_table_border_divider

 

Another option would be a striped-table with background shading on alternate rows like this:

 

tr:nth-child(even) {

background-color: #AEAEAE;

}

https://www.w3schools.com/css/tryit.asp?filename=trycss_table_striped

 

When you switch to a dabase-driven solution, you'll no longer be burdened by these irksome problems because your data (race results) will be managed outside Dreamweaver.

 

Good luck and happy holidays!

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
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