Table not obeying settings - how to overcome?

[Nedlaw]

Hi. I have a simple table, 4 columns by (about) 15 rows. The cell text is defined by a paragraph style, the cell is defined by a cell style, and the table is defined by a table style. The table style references the cell styles, and the cell styles reference the paragraph styles in the way I believe they are meant to. (One may always be wrong in this assumption.) I have made tables in the past, and generally, they have behaved.

Left this out: Using most current InDesign CC for Windows (Win 1809 build)

The table formatting is simply not obeying the settings. There are no obvious overrides. I have restarted InDesign twice, and reloaded the documents that make up the book.

Here is a portion of my table:

I want to have a gray line under each row, so I open the Table Style Options dialog. Note that the cell styles are referenced.

I move to row strokes in the Table Style Options:

In Row strokes, I ask for every other row (although I actually want every row -- but I figure I'll deal with that later). I set the weight of the line to 1 point and the color to 10% black. I click Okay.

This is what I get:

That is, no underline.

Perhaps I am missing a technique, here. I've tried fiddling with the cell definition (that can fill all cells, and put borders on all four sides of cells, but won't obey when I want only the undersides of the cells to have a line (I'm aware of clicking the blue lines on the box in the cell definition). I have tried fiddling with the paragraph definition, but that only deals with the text, not the cell. As I say, no obvious overrides are at work -- but that doesn't mean that there aren't any overrides hidden somewhere that are not obvious.

Any advice? Thanks in advance for help. I've been at this a couple of hours, trying various combinations of settings.

-- JW

[Barb Binder]

Hi JW:

My money is still on overrides. Select the entire table with the Type tool:

1. Alt/Opt click on [Basic Table] in Table Styles panel
2. Alt/Opt click on [None] in Cell Styles panel

Then try again.

~Barb

[Nedlaw]

Thanks for the tip on the overrides.

I'll try to answer my own question: the underline that I am looking for is controlled by the Cell Styles dialog, under the Strokes and Fills tab. The settings here appear to be ephemeral; that is you use them to set the table at the moment and then click Okay... but if you return later, the settings have returned to "stock" even though they persist in the table. (I would have expected them to persist the way the font in a paragraph style persists.)

I looked at another table I had done in the same book, and the settings there shows NO underlines... even though the lower boundaries of the cells were indeed visible.

Just after I posted, I got this to work, but I find it somewhat counter-intuitive. I don't explain how I missed this after two hours of dinking around with these very settings.

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Hey JW:

I do a lot of table work, and overrides are hidden yet prevalent. I just remove them before I get started from any table I import. Because I nest paragraph styles in cell styles, I Alt/Opt click on [Basic paragraph] too.

As for the row strokes—you can define them at the table level or the cell level. If you define both, one wins. It's confusing, at best. I prefer to define row strokes at the table level, but that's me.

~Barb

[Nedlaw]

Thanks again. I tried the table settings first -- but they didn't perform as expected. That was my original post. Perhaps there were hidden overrides and I didn't catch them. However, this was not a table that I imported. I typed it in directly. And laboriously. It should not have been carrying anything from some other program. But... maybe something got set by some means unnoticed by me.

To me it seemed as if they table simply was not obeying its own settings. Obvious ignorance on my part.

Thanks once more.