Center Text in a Cell

[Engineering Ambrell]

Hi all, I am new to FrameMaker 10. I am trying to edit an existing table. want to center text in a cell and nothing i try in table designer has worked. any help appreciated. thanks

[Arnis_Gubins]

Use the paragraph property for the paratag used in the table cell to make it centred.

[Engineering Ambrell]

Thank you. That worked.

[Stefan-Gentz · Accepted solution]

Like Arnis Gubins‌ said, you can find this option in the paragraph designer in the table cell options:

[Engineering Ambrell]

Thank you. I would have thought that part of table designer that mentions centering would have done the trick. I never would have thought paragraph designer.

[Lynne A. Price]

Myko,

   Just to summarize and motivate what Stephan and Arnis have already said:

1. FrameMaker allows you to specify both vertical and horizontal alignment. You can specify vertical alignment for cells within a table row and horizontal alignment for the entire table or for the content of an individual cell.
2. In common English usage, "middle" and "center" can often be used interchangeably; FrameMaker reserves "middle" for vertical alignment and "center" for horizaontal alignment.
3. While it is quite natural to assume at first that alignment properties should be specified in the table designer, after some consideration you will realize that the contents of different cells in a table may have different alignment. For example, cells with textual content are open left-justified or centered whereas cells with numeric content are often right-justified. Alignment of the content of a cell, therefore, cannot be set as a table property. It's even possible for a cell to contain multiple paragraphs, which have different alignment. For example, a cell may contain a centered title that applies to the following left-aligned (or justified) paragraph. Thus, cell alignment logically needs to be a paragraph property.
4. When a table is not as wide as the text frame or column in which it appears, you can align the entire table on the left, center it, or align it on the right. This horizontal alignment property must be set in the table designer because it applies to the table as a whole.
5. Horizontal alignment is set on the basic page (first tab) of the paragraph designer because it is commonly set for paragraphs outside of tables also and the first page of the designer holds the most common properties. Vertical alignment is specific to tables and appears on the table page (next to the last page on the right).

I hope this explanation makes it easier to remember where to find this information in the future.

        --Lynne

[Engineering Ambrell]

Hi Lynne

Thank you for the explanation. I have tried centering as described above but it seems to be save proof. Could it be some sort of a template that I need to override?

-Myko

[Lynne A. Price]

Myko,

   For questions about how to specify the formatting that is applied when you open an XML document, you should probably start a new discussion in the structured FrameMaker forum (FrameMaker Structured). Briefly though, when you open an XML document, FrameMaker flows the content into a template. Among other things, that template defines needed paragraph formats and the text format rules that associate elements and attributes with individual properties, complete paragraph formats, and so forth.

   You might find http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/12.0/StructuredDev/Structure_Dev_Guide.pdf and http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/12.0/StructuredDev/Structure_Dev_Reference.pdf some help.

             --Lynne

[Engineering Ambrell]

Thank you, Lynne. I will try the Structured forum.

-Myko