Whole table design gets modified if I change a word

[PandaSekh]

Sorry for the bad title, here's an explanation:   

I'm translating 3 InDesign projects. So far for the first two it all went smoothly, but now when I change words in this table-like design the lines break for no apparent reason. There were similar designs even in the other files and I worked on them without problems. Here's the screenshots to better understand.

How can I change the text without breaking everything?

[Scott Falkner]

Please repost the images with all guides and hidden characters showing.

[PandaSekh]

Is that what you meant?

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi PandaSekh .

thank you for posting this screenshot.

Just one comment on this: It will be a nightmare to translate this.

It's not a "real" table with table cells organized in columns and rows.

The apparent reason why lines will break if you change the length of the text here and there is that all lines are working with tabs.

And the one who did set up this is not working very systematic. You can see that e.g. in the lines that start with two tabs to reach the second "column".

What can you do?

1. First reduce the number of tabs to the necessary ones, then format the tab positions anew.

Or:

2. First reduce the number of tabs to the necessary ones and then convert the text to a real table with table cells that are organized in columns and rows. If you never worked with real tables in InDesign you'll see a very steep learning curve. And a lot of time to finish this.

Regards,
Uwe

[PandaSekh]

Thanks for your answer! I already had problems on this documents as the one who did those probably thought that no one will ever modify them. I had a few problems with text boxes being so large that they went over other boxes and similar, nothing too bad tho.

Strange thing is, I already had to modify a similar table but I had no problem.

That's an example of the same table on another file.

Anyway, thanks for your help but as I can see it's not an easy thing. As my job is to translate, not to edit this file for hours, I contacted my client and explained the problem. We'll see.

Again, thanks for your help.

[PandaSekh]

Sorry everyone, but this was just a visual bug. I spent way too much time on this while it actually was nothing. Refreshing the table (by changing page. saving and exiting or other stuff) solves the problem