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Answered

Create tables with spaces between cells (ie cellspacing)

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
March 27, 2017
9 replies
28879 views

Hi.

One image is better than 100 words, so here is one.

Untill now, this kind of table is done by grouping Text-blocks.
Do you know if ther is a way to get the same result using tables only using regular options or any plugin ?

Thanks in advance.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Laubender

Hi Aman,

at first glance the task seems to be an easy one. But it isn't.

What you are showing is not exactly what the OP—bernard—likes to accomplish.

In his sample there is no stroke around the table.

The gray header cells are showing no black strokes.
Just the fills.

It could be done using empty columns and empty rows.

But I assume this trick is not allowed.

Maybe something can be done by text formatting using a combination of paragraph shading, graphic lines above and below?
But that wouldn't be very flexible. And if the cells showing white as fill should be transparent behind a background it would be perhaps impossible to do…

Regards,
Uwe

MW Design

Inspiring

Maybe something can be done by text formatting using a combination of paragraph shading, graphic lines above and below?

Maybe. Probably.

I don't have a current subscription to ID so cannot try (CS6 doesn't have shading). The below was done in QXP using shading and tabbed text. Now that the styles are set up, a table could be copied to a decent text editor and manipulated using Regex, then brought in as a tagged text snippet.

(oops, forgot to edit the text styles to make 'em white...)

karacte

Participating Frequently

I think I found an easy workaround for this. The answer is creating paragraph styles. After you create your table, make sure, within the table, you don't have any cell fills or strokes. Create paragraph styles with borders or shading and tweak the offset space, indents, etc. and natural space is left within the cells. It eliminates the need for extra columns or rows and other fiddly things.

These examples just show some of the ways you can add styles. Hope this helps!

L

Laubender

Adobe Expert

Hi Bernhard,

we can acchieve it, if:

1. White strokes are allowed.

2. The strokes of the cells are done with:
A. Paragraph shading of the text

B. A line above with a proper position and width

I am also use a nearly undiscoverable feature of cell strokes that is only available in one menu where you can set the strokes of the cells to stroke style "None".

Using stroke style "None" for the cell's stroke is shown here with my German InDesign. This option can only be found in the "Cell Options" menu. Nowhere else! The stroke width with my sample is 7pt.

For the fill of the header rows I used another cell decoration feature. Not the usual fill, but "Diagonal Lines" with a large value for the point size that also comes with "Cell Options":

Perhaps we can also use "Diagonal Lines" with the body cells plus Line Above for text formatting.

But we also can use a combination of paragraph shading and Line Above for formatting the text of the body cells so that a "line around a fill" can be seen. Unfortunately paragraph shading was not developed further for a fill plus a line around a paragraph.

Paragraph shading settings for text formatting:

Line Above setting for text formatting case 1:

Line Above setting for text formatting case 2:

To Obi-wan:
No, I did not forget about this sample you are showing :-)

Regards,
Uwe

Eternal Warrior

Inspiring

This is really useful knowledge Uwe!

I never knew (or perhaps never looked) at the fact there was a stroke style "none" - In my head i was looking at how to change the stroke colour to none.

So now I have advanced my knowledge!

This is the best thing about trying to help people - when it also helps you... Haha!

Eternal Warrior

Inspiring

FWIW: You can also choose the stroke option none in table styles... Meaning that solution 1 will work regardless of background....

Eternal Warrior

Inspiring

There are many ways to achieve cell spacing.

You certainly don't need to go to such complicated lengths as:

bernardc8812564 wrote
this kind of table is done by grouping Text-blocks.

The quickest way would be amaarora suggestion.

It sounds like you should learn more about table and cell styles as well as this can make things more "automatic".

L

Laubender

Adobe Expert

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Eternal+Warrior wrote
There are many ways to achieve cell spacing.
You certainly don't need to go to such complicated lengths as:
bernardc8812564 wrote
this kind of table is done by grouping Text-blocks.

Hi Eternal Warrior,

I'm sure there were good reasons.

Do you have a suggestion how to do it with table cells?
I'm curious…

Regards,
Uwe

Eternal Warrior

Inspiring

Good morning Laubender,

I hope you are well?

I applaud the fact that you are looking at the exact way that this has been constructed and are focused only on providing "the" solution that exactly replicates what the OP has made.

I personally am not as clear why you assume that it has to be an exact reconstruction in the manner shown - unless you either personally know or assume that the OP has extensive knowledge of InDesign and wants an "exact" reconstruction. Which was not specified.

Also the fact that someone wants "traditional web-based" cell spacing should tell you that you will need to use one form of work around or another.

Both could be more automated with table and cell styles...

For a more amazing result you could write a (couple of) script(s) - for solution #2.

SOLUTION #1 WITHOUT MAKING LOADS OF TEXT BOXES....

As suggested by amaarora you would create an illusionary text cell spacing using either black or paper strokes... this could be put into a table style quite easily using the following example:

Giving you a very quick example like this:

Obviously this creates either black or white stroked lines but if it is for print and going to be flattened on to a solid fill background then this is no problem... You could always have the stroke the same colour as the fill.

However - the trouble comes when you need a completely alpha transparent background except for the cell fill.

SOLUTION #2 - ...NOT AUTOMATIC (WITHOUT ADOBE'S HELP OR A SCRIPT) BUT STILL PRETTY QUICK IN COMPARISON:

Again there is a slightly quicker way of doing this than the original - but it involves doubling the amount of rows and or columns that the table has and then applying an alternating cell style to every other row and column to make them effectively the correct width

In this case 6 columns displayed here becomes 12 and 11 rows become 22.

Then we need to make every other row and column the desired width and height of the "stroke"...

Personally - Adobe should have made us able to do this as part of style controls - but you would need a script to do this currently as even manually we cannot currently Ctrl or cmd click on multiple rows or columns you can only shift click...

With this done you can create the same effect with a lot less time and effort and have transparency in the "strokes".

IF the OP wants to recreate exactly the way they have currently produced the table then this will need a script or perhaps a feature request so that typically coded cell spacing is actually supported.

Anyway... that's how I would do it.

If the OP wants to submit a feature request I suggest they do that here: Feature Request/Bug Report Form

Best wishes and kind regards,

EW

amaarora

Community Manager

Hi,

An easy workaround to achieve something similar in InDesign would be to apply cell Stroke to the table cells with appropriate weight.

First create a table of desired number of cells and columns

Select all the cells and open the strokes panel from window menu.

Apply the stroke as shown in the below screenshot. To increase the spacing between cells, you can increase the stroke weight. however, this will also increase the weight of the black section.

Preview, if the cell spacing is as per need. You can then fill cells with the needed colors and type your data. Also note that this leaves an extra border around your table.

Regards,

Aman

L

LaubenderCorrect answer

Adobe Expert

Hi Aman,

at first glance the task seems to be an easy one. But it isn't.

What you are showing is not exactly what the OP—bernard—likes to accomplish.

In his sample there is no stroke around the table.

The gray header cells are showing no black strokes.
Just the fills.

It could be done using empty columns and empty rows.

But I assume this trick is not allowed.

Maybe something can be done by text formatting using a combination of paragraph shading, graphic lines above and below?
But that wouldn't be very flexible. And if the cells showing white as fill should be transparent behind a background it would be perhaps impossible to do…

Regards,
Uwe

amaarora

Community Manager

Hi Uwe,

i totally agree with you.

I only intended to give a workaround to achieve a close result.

The stroke can be used to achieve just the cell spacing and later the color can be changed to paper, by selecting the entire table and then choosing stroke color from the control strip.

Agreed, that this method too would need lot of tweaking and adjustments to make it look identical to the desired design.

-Aman

M

Malcolm Whild

Participating Frequently

Hi,

Every cell in an Indesign table has cell insets, which automatically default to 4pt (1.411mm) so you shouldn't need to worry about it.

Make sure that you use table and cell styles to keep consistency as it looks as if your tables are fairly complex.

Regards,

Malcolm

Pariah Burke

Adobe Expert

The original poster tagged the question "InDesign", folks. I'm moving the post to the InDesign Forum.

Nancy OShea

Adobe Expert

In HTML tables, we use CSS padding on the table cell selector.

td {

padding: 20px; /**adjust values to suit**/

}

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator

John T Smith

Adobe Expert

The Lounge Forum is not for technical help, please provide the name of the program you are using so your message may be moved to the correct program forum... A program would be Photoshop or Dreamweaver or Muse or Premiere Pro or ???

bernardc8812564Author

Participating Frequently

@John T Smith: Sorry, I thought I posted in the right place

@

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