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Known Participant
December 11, 2016
Answered

Cellstyles are not being applied, when creating a table or applying the tablestyle.

  • December 11, 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 8187 views

Hi Indesign-Friends,

I set up some custom tablestyles, containing some custom cellstyles for header and footer rows, left and right columns, and body rows. Those Cellstyles again, contain different formatstyles.

However, whenever i create a new table, with the selected tablestyle, or apply the tablestyle to a existing table, the cellstyles are not being applied :/...

I can't seem to solve that riddle...

Any idea where the mistake could be?

I'm happy to provide screenshots if necessary.

Best regards,

Paul

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Barb Binder

In my experience, it's overrides. Try this on one table:

  1. Save the file
  2. Select the entire table and remove all the overrides:
    1. Alt/Opt click on [Basic Table] in the Table Styles panel
    2. Alt/Opt click on [None] in Cell Styles panel
    3. Alt/Opt click on [Basic Paragraph] in the Paragraphs Styles panel
    4. Optionally, Alt/Opt click on [None] in the Character Styles panel
  3. Then try assigning the table style

3 replies

Barb Binder
Community Expert
December 11, 2016

I just remembered that I wrote a post on this topic a few years ago—the info is still current, however:

https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-tables-that-wont-accept-table-and-cell-styles/

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
Barb Binder
Barb BinderCorrect answer
Community Expert
December 11, 2016

In my experience, it's overrides. Try this on one table:

  1. Save the file
  2. Select the entire table and remove all the overrides:
    1. Alt/Opt click on [Basic Table] in the Table Styles panel
    2. Alt/Opt click on [None] in Cell Styles panel
    3. Alt/Opt click on [Basic Paragraph] in the Paragraphs Styles panel
    4. Optionally, Alt/Opt click on [None] in the Character Styles panel
  3. Then try assigning the table style
~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
Barb Binder
Community Expert
December 11, 2016

Great news, Paul!

Here's one more tip—when I'm in a table-intensive workflow, I have a workspace set up to make that sequence quick and easy. I call it Table Focus, and it puts all those panels front and center. The feature you are using is an important one for table-intensive documents. When set up correctly, you can format an entire table with one click on the table style (because of the nesting potential—table styles calling in cell styles, cell styles calling in para styles, paras styles calling in GREP and character styles.) In long doc layout, this is the difference between having evenings and weekends free, or not!

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
Known Participant
December 11, 2016

Hi BarbBinder, Great Tip. Thank you!

However, it doesn't seem like it is working perfectly fine.

It seem like your approach works with new created tables. That already helps a lot.

But with already existing tables (via import from a word document) it unfortunately doesn't :/...

Especially the Header cells are not getting transformed into the correct cell style.

I can't seem to figure out why this is happening.

Best regards,

Paul

winterm
Brainiac
December 11, 2016

Yeah, ID table styles still are somewhat... clumsy.

You may find (or not) some useful insights here and here, and similar places, but don't expect miracles...

Known Participant
December 11, 2016

uff...just read through it...that sounds really frustrating.

Thank you anyways winterm​!