Table Column is Empty

[frameexpert]

Hi All,

I have a table where I am trying to see if a particular column is empty, meaning the it does contain any text or anchored frames. I am thinking the best approach is to check each cell in the column, but if there is a shorthand way of doing it, I would appreciate any pointers. Thank you very much.

Rick

[Jongware]

What do you consider 'empty'?

alert (app.selection[0].parent.columns[0].contents.join('').length);

(this is supposed to return '0' for an empty column, some other positive value otherwise). This will not work with columns that only seem to be empty (i.e., containing a single space). And sometimes the cells are empty but their shading indicates data.

[frameexpert]

This works fine for a column that contains more than one cell, but the join method fails for a single-cell column. This appears to be a good workaround.

<pre>

function colOrRowIsEmpty(colOrRow) {
   
    if (colOrRow.cells.length == 1) {
        if (colOrRow.contents.length == 0) {
            return true;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    } else {
        if (colOrRow.contents.join("").length == 0) {
            return true;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    }
}

</pre>

Thank you very much for the generous help.

Rick

[Jongware]

The one thing I did not try -- but your solution seems perfect. And it's a function, returning a boolean! Well done!