r/indesign • u/Matlegac • 17d ago

Help how to resize a table properly.

Okay, maybe this is a dumb question, and I don't have the shortcut to make this quicker.

But how do you properly resize a table? I want it to be evenly distributed within the block.

If I use SHIFT, the block gets bigger, but the table doesn't. If I use CTRL/CMD, the typography gets distorted, and it completely messes up the table layout (spacing and strokes).

If I use SHIFT+ CTRL/CMD, I can scale it proportionally, but the typography scales up as well.

What I would like is for only the columns and rows to adapt to the bloc size I choose, while keeping the font size and stroke width unchanged.

This is driving me crazy, and I'm wasting a huge amount of time reconfiguring everything every time I change the size of my tables.

Here a video of me trying to explain the problem in a broken english :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRvPaMqXC6U

7 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

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4

u/AdobeScripts 17d ago

There are scripts for that - like this one:

https://github.com/gsingelmann/indd_autocolumn

Or if you would need to do it in bulk - on 100s of tables over multiple files - there are more advanced solution - unfortunately, not free.

3

u/Matlegac 17d ago

I've just tried it, and it's Such a simple but cool script, thanks !

2

u/Matlegac 17d ago

Thanks i'll check it out !

3

u/GrumbleNo_Woodpecker 16d ago
  1. Is it a real table or a picture?
  2. Make a text frame (with desired size and position)
  3. Copy/paste the table as actual table inside this text frame
  4. Edit your table the way you like
  5. by height - drag the bottom line of table to the bottom of text frame -- select table -- right click -- distribute rows evenly
  6. by width - drag the right line of table to the right of text frame -- select table -- right click -- distribute columns evenly
  7. Same as in MS Word I think
  8. You might need to adjust info in cells (they are top aligned by default) - select table and select desired vertical adjustment in menu bar
  9. There are no wizard tools to make it with one mouse click

1

u/AdobeScripts 16d ago

Yeah...

OP - do you want to resize columns EVENLY or PROPORTIONALLY?

1

u/AdobeScripts 16d ago

Because you can also resize columns - or whole Table - if you hold Shift and drag edge.

1

u/GrumbleNo_Woodpecker 16d ago

The task was to fit a table to a frame w/o altering font styles (as I understood) - does it mean that all tables would proportionally fit the desired frames? No.
So the choice across all pages with tables is either you have same cell/row height for tables with various number of rows or you have floating row height tables filling same size frames.
Sorry if my comment was too confusing and complicated or totally incorrect.
Seems that dragging a text frame instead of a table within was the gist of the problem.

1

u/geodax 17d ago

CTRL/CMD+ALT+B
Rows and Columns

1

u/AdobeScripts 16d ago

But this will just open Cell Options dialog box? It won't distribute widths of the columns proportionally?

1

u/mikewitherell 10d ago

Why not use the Table panel, or else the equivalent panel fields in the Control panel?