Changing table direction - script

[Nibus]

Hello all,

I have a series of large Arabic documents where I need to flip the table direction to RTL. I've cobbled together the following:

var a = app.activeDocument.textFrames.everyItem().tables.everyItem().getElements();

for (var i=a.length-1; i > 0; i--){

a.tableDirection = TableDirectionOptions.RIGHT_TO_LEFT_DIRECTION;

}

It seems to work but doesn't catch every table - what have I left out?

[Guest]

Hi,

maybe it is worth a try to use "stories" instead of "textFrames"?

var a = app.activeDocument.stories.everyItem().tables.everyItem().getElements();

BR

Jan

[Nibus]

Hi Jan

Thanks - I did try this but "stories" still does not pick up every table.

[Guest · Accepted solution]

And shouldn't it be "i >= 0"?

[Nibus]

Ha, thank you! How elementary

[Guest]

[TᴀW]

it should be

i >= 0

[Dirk Becker]

Please try without the loop. If you assign a value to everyItem().someProperty, it should modify each referenced object.

app.activeDocument.stories.everyItem().tables.everyItem().tableDirection = TableDirectionOptions.RIGHT_TO_LEFT_DIRECTION;

Dirk

[Trevor:]

Hi Dirk

For the nested tables one would add

app.findTextPreferences.findWhat = "\x16";

then loop though the results and change direction as required

Trevor

[Dirk Becker]

Hi Trevor,

thanks for bringing up nested tables. Do you mean tables nested in table cells? That would be:

app.activeDocument.stories.everyItem().tables.everyItem().tableDirection = TableDirectionOptions.RIGHT_TO_LEFT_DIRECTION;

app.activeDocument.stories.everyItem().tables.everyItem().cells.everyItem().tables.everyItem().tableDirection = TableDirectionOptions.RIGHT_TO_LEFT_DIRECTION;

Probably it is a good idea to add some try/catch if any of the expressions yields no hits, e.g. the doc has no tables.

Dirk

[Trevor:]

Hi Dirk

Yes, but if you want to catch those really common tables nested in cells of tables nested in cells etc. then

See https://forums.adobe.com/message/6087936#6087936

Trevor

[Trevor:]

Hi Dirk

This will get all the nested tables regardless of their depth, although I am not certain whether this or the Grep method would be faster for very lager documents with large amounts of nested levels.

var doc = app.activeDocument, t;
(t = doc.stories.everyItem().tables.everyItem()).tableDirection = TableDirectionOptions.RIGHT_TO_LEFT_DIRECTION;
while (t.cells.length) (t = t.cells.everyItem ().tables.everyItem ()).tableDirection = TableDirectionOptions.RIGHT_TO_LEFT_DIRECTION;