Changing and adding table borders

[deckhogan]

I need to change the border color of all tables in one project, and add borders to all tables in another project. Is there a way I can make these changes without opening every topic that contains a table and manually changing the borders? I'm using Robohelp HTML X5.0.2.

[RoboColum_n_]

You could try using a find and replace tool (e.g. FAR) but the problem you'll face is likely to be the code used in the tables you have. That is it may differ from topic to topic. You'll probably be able to do it with a bit of thought and analysis. Take a copy of your projects first.

[Guest]

If you are using a CSS file for your project, I think you can change all tables with that. However, you would have to do it manually because the closest thing RoboHelp's style sheet dialog lets you do is state a style for table text. CSS fans will tell you that the point of CSS is to avoid using tables for layout, but you can still use CSS to dictate how your table looks. A few extra lines in your CSS file, and you should be able to change all tables without making any changes in each topic.

--Ben

[Peter Grainge]

Watch out for the corpses on the way if you try to do it via the CSS file. Look at the way the code for a table is written in the source. It doesn't place nicely with CSS.

[Guest]

I just experimented with a simple table style, and it seemed to work fine. The CSS code looked like this:

table
{
border: #000000 1px solid;
}

This is for a black, 1-pixel solid border. Note that this added such a border around ALL tables because I didn't specify a certain class or ID. It may be that trying to get more complicated than the above code will cause problems as Peter says. I haven't tried this before because I usually want my table cells to be invisible.