Are there preformatted table styles?

[MaradrX]

Posting to the correct forum this time after going down a road searching for this in others... 

I'm seeing I'll need to build or hunt for files with Table Styles to be imported - are there no prebuilt table styles to start with that can be modified?  Thus far the free template table styles seem to be built for much more 'minimist flash' than a more basic setup.  

Am I thinking it may be easier to do a high res, blown up screenshot from MS Word instead of trying to fuss with getting a table to be somewhat similar?  

[BobLevine]

You can create the table in Excel and place it as a formatted table in InDesign. Might need a bit of tweaking but you'll probably find it faster and easier than futzing around with InDesign's table tools.

[Mike Witherell]

Hi Maradr,

It is easy to build and apply Table Styles as you File > Place tables from either Word or Excel.

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/table-cell-styles.html

Once made, Table Styles can be re-used in new documents. The Table Styles panel menu button allows you to import them into your current document. I built the "Adobe InDesign 2025 style starter document" as an example and instruction about how to use and re-use styles.

[BobLevine]

I gotta disagree a bit here, Mike. Table and Cell styles were added to InDesign when Adobe bought the plugin from Teacup somewhere around 20 years ago. There have been zero improvements made and they're clunky as hell. And you still can't set the cell inset as part of the style which forces an overset in many cases. Yes, like every other feature, they're powerful, but they need to be easier to use.

Going back and forth betwen paragraph, character, cell, and table styles is just way too much work unless you need the exact same style over and over and over again. As I said in my original post it's probably easier to do them externally in Word or Excel and place them as formatted tables.

[Mike Witherell]

Hi Bob, you make a good point. I retract the assertion  of *easy*.

However, once I learned to make Table and Cell Styles while nothing is selected, and only later apply from the top down, and then clear overrides, I got excellent productivity and a minimum of buggy-ness. 

But, yes, with 5 layers of potential attributes arguing for who will win out, Tables are challenging to comprehend.