Indesign Tables Drivin' Me Nuts

February 6, 2007 12:07 PM

I use tables in Indesign for lots of layout control purposes - they are fantastic for building very complex grids and forms. I often use them to build graphs as well, even simple bar graphs, but am having a big problem now.

I've made a dozen similar bar graphs, and had to resize them all slightly to fit a new layout. I didn't resize them all exactly the same - they started out at different sizes and ended up with the same width. Thus, the text in the various fields is now at sizes like "7 pt (11.2 pt)" and "9 pt (13.8 point)" and I need to make it consistent throughout. Using paragraph or character styles (new ones) doesn't work, as the overall resizing of the table (105%, 117%, 140%, 82% etc.) seems to exert magical resizing powers on the text ... I can't copy and paste, either - text is resized upon pasting into the enlarged or shrunken table.

How do I release these stupid resizing percentages, and have them all - at the size they are now - become 100%, so that I can make type size consistent between all of them? Arrrr, it be drivin' me nuts, as the pirate said to the barkeep.

posted by luriete to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Yeah, don'tcha hate that!?! Try this.

- Ungroup your objects (if grouped)

- Select the text box(es) (not the text) using the selection tool.

- Go to the Transform Panel and click on the Options Arrow. You should see an option there called "Scale Text Attributes" Select that (which will turn it grey)

- That Text Box should now have Scaled the attributes to what was in the parentheses making it easier to fix the type.
posted by Wink Ricketts at 12:40 PM on February 6, 2007

Wink Ricketts, you have saved me!
posted by luriete at 1:06 PM on February 6, 2007

How can a user ensure that this stupid "feature" is NEVER EVER engaged?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:26 PM on February 6, 2007

good question!

also, it doesn't turn it gray - it removes the option COMPLETELY from the menu once you do it - weird but it works, so I'm not complaining.
posted by luriete at 1:45 PM on February 6, 2007

Glad to be of service, Pal!

I suppose the turning it grey or removing it from menu may be different cross-platform or from CS1 to CS2? I'm on a Mac - CS1 and it turned it grey (ie didn't let me choose it as an option. Kind of like how Photoshop does it when you're in the wrong mode for some of its filters).

But then, maybe I'm seein' things! Wouldn't be the first time!!
posted by Wink Ricketts at 2:56 PM on February 6, 2007

Yeah, I'm in CS2, OS X, and it just disappears altogether after using it. But as long as it works, I'm happy - and it does, so I am.
posted by luriete at 6:51 PM on February 6, 2007

Edit -> Preferences -> Type, then make sure the box marked "Adjust Text Attributes when Scaling" is UNchecked may help prevent this problem in the future.

(ID CS2 on a pc; your menus may be slightly different)
posted by cass at 7:13 AM on February 7, 2007

You say may. Does that mean that IDCS2 will still adjust type, no matter the setting?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:21 AM on February 7, 2007

I say "may" because I don't use tables a whole lot, but keeping that preference unchecked and then scaling, for example, a group of boxes with text in them (without ungrouping first) DOES NOT scale the text, just as it is supposed to do, afaik.
posted by cass at 11:21 AM on February 7, 2007