Crop/Clip Table to Non-Rectangular Frame

[jethrodesign]

Hi, I have an unusual problem I'm trying to solve that has until now never came up. I have a table that was created in InDesign, but it needs to be 'cropped' to a frame that is a trapezoid, not a typical rectangle. Basiclly, the bottom edge of the frame has a roughly 45º angle to it.

When I paste the table into this trapezoidal frame, the excess overlaps the bottom of the 'short' side of the trapezoid and just sticks out rather than being clipped to the shape. If I shrink the whole shape down, eventually rows will hide when the 'tallest' side of the trapezoid overlaps. But the table just stilcks out of the shorter side. I guess this makes sense if you MUST see all cells in a table clearly, but in this case to match the rest of the design, it should get cropped to the shape so it has the same bottom angle as all other frames.

The only thing I've been able to do so far is save the table as a separate InDesign doc and place it as more of a graphic. But this is very inconvenient when it comes to making any changes and ensuring they match what's on the page, along with picking up any styles from the master document, etc.

Thanks for any creative ideas here!

[Mike Witherell · Accepted solution]

Tables are square. If the sum of the widths of the columns is greater than the width of the frame, the table protrudes out the right side. I would be fascinated to see a screenshot of your design, however!

OTOH, if you take your table selected by the frame, and copy it, and "Paste Into" another frame, the table will appear to be cropped out of sight. Not sure why you would, tho.

[jethrodesign]

Ugh, sorry for the confusion here. When I had tried pasting the text frame with the table in it into the trapezoid frame, it would not show. Turns out there was a hidden object with text wrap applied (or possibly the text frame I was pasting had it?!?)! Works as described and how I would have anticipated with the text wrap removed.

Thanks for the response.