Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with tables

Table/Lamp integrated combo for my bedside for $50-$75?

curiositykilledthelemur — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:46:04 -0800

Table/Lamp integrated combo for my bedside for $50-$75? Hi! My extensive searching has failed me - I'm looking for two table and lamp integrated combos for my bedside, but all of the ones I see are extremely expensive. Does anyone know anywhere online where I could find one that looks kinda like this (magazine rack totally optional). Also, what are some good search engine words? googling "lamp table" and "table, lamp, combo/combination" still isn't narrowing it enough to the specific integration I'm looking for. My budget is under $75, which I do think is possible, if I can hit upon the proper site/search terms. I am absolutely flexible in terms of color and lamp types - just want one item to do two jobs. Thanks!

How to fix this?

amethysts — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:04:24 -0800

I'm doing a project in Access and I need help conceptualizing how to get messy data into shape... So I have some data in an Access table. I am well-versed in Access and am using it in this instance for its report-generating qualities and ease of use for the non-tech proficient. This is the only tool at my disposal.
The data came to me as an .xls with a lot of junk and stuff basically all over the place. I made a bunch of queries to get rid of the junk and re-organize (which was a lot easier to do in Access than Excel).

However this is where I'm stuck. This is what I have now:

Name | Test Date | Test data
Jane | --------------------------
------ | 3/10/09 | -----------
------- | ------------ | 1
------- | ------------ | 2
------- | ------------ | 3
John | ---------------------------
------ | 3/12/09 | -------------
------- | ------------ | 3
------- | ------------ | 1
------- | ------------ | 5
------ | 3/13/09 | -------------
------- | ------------ | 2
------- | ------------ | 5
------- | ------------ | 7

This is what I'd like to have:
Name | Test Date | Test data
Jane | 3/10/09 | 1
Jane | 3/10/09 | 2
Jane | 3/10/09 | 3
John | 3/12/09 | 3
John | 3/12/09 | 1
John | 3/12/09 | 5
John | 3/13/09 | 2
John | 3/13/09 | 5
John | 3/13/09 | 7

Some of the names have more than one test under them. How many or which names are impossible to predict. You need to SEE the data to do the updating.

I know ideally you would have Names and Test dates in their own table, but I'm trying to make this a one-table deal for ease of use by people who are not me who will be ok with importing and running the queries (which is basically one click using macros) but not much else.

I can make and run a bunch of queries and forms to do this, but I can't seem to figure out which ones.

How much is my table worth?

Eumachia L F — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 05:47:38 -0800

I have a tiered table that is hand-painted and signed by the artist Katherine Henick. How much might it be worth (in less than perfect condition)? My table looks just like this one from Craigslist (this is not my photo, just one that I found). I've seen hand-painted pieces by this artist vary in price from $10-$300, but I have no idea how to estimate where mine might fall within that range. There are no structural damages to the table itself, but there is a little damage to the painted part. Does this decimate the value? I'm aware (er, guessing) that the painting is what makes this table interesting, so I'm bracing for the worst here.

Are there any general rules of thumb I could apply? Anyone have knowledge of Katherine Henick's work and its market value? I would also welcome suggestions for furniture dealers in the Atlanta area who I could call with questions. This table must be sold as part of the Everything-Must-Go Purge of 09, but I'm trying to figure out if it's worth more leg work than just putting in my yard sale.

Tabula Nada

sandra_s — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:39:22 -0800

All of a sudden I cant insert a table in Dramweaver MX, and it is NOT the View>Table View>Standard View versus Layout View setting (as far as I can tell). I have been using my version of Dreamweaver for years, originally on XP, but on Vista the last year and a half.

Last week all of a sudden when I click the table tool, or go to Insert>Table I get nothing. The tool and menu item are not grayed out, they are live, but dont do anything. I am in standard view.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Dreamweaver. That solved the problem for 1 day. Now its doing it again.

I can add and delete cells/rows/columns from existing tables, but not create a new one. I have been getting by by copy/pasting an existing table, deleting its contents and deleting/adding rows and columns, but i NEED to be able to just create a table again. And within Dreamweaver.

This happens in new and existing files.

HELP!!

Thanks in advance!

Help with autonumbering in Word2007, please!

mateuslee — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 02:49:06 -0800

How do I number individual tables in Word2007? (I don't mean numbering cells, or inserting captions). The numbering on my dissertation is now all screw up! So, I'm writing a long chapter for my dissertation which involves lots of examples like this:

1) Aka is__ harsta.m
this clothing AC wash I
‘Wash this clothing!’ (imperative)

Whenever I switch from Word07 to other versions of Word the formatting gets all screwed up and, since I already have over 100 examples and growing, I thought best to put these examples into tables (with invisible borders) to stabalize them and avoid a mess like this:

1) Aka is__ harsta.m
this clothing AC wash I
‘Wash this clothing!’ (imperative)

The tables work great, however, they are hard to number using the autonumbering in Word. It seems impossible to have a table exist on the same level as a number, and since some examples are tables and others are not, I would like the numbering to be consistent.

Does anyone know of a solution for this? Thanks!

Need layout help

pjern — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:59:56 -0800

I'm trying to puzzle out a change I'd like to make to this page (and its brethren) on my website. Basically, I'd like the EXIF block to come up to the top, essentially like a second column to the text. In other words, what I have now is





texttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttex

texttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttexttext



                                                                   EXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIF

                                                                   EXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIF

and what I'd like is:





TextTextTextTextTextTextText                 EXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIF

TextTextTextTextTextTextText                 EXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIF

TextTextTextTextTextTextText                 EXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIF

TextTextTextTextTextTextText                 EXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIFEXIF

TextTextTextTextTextTextText 

TextTextTextTextTextTextText

What I can't figure out is where to change the templates.

The theme I'm using is Grain off of SourceForge.

Any ideas?

HTML - make the cells the same height

lockedroomguy — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 23:11:17 -0800

HTML - Why aren't these two table cells the same height? I want this HTML to display with the image and text side-by-side, with the size of the image and the size of the text block cell to be the same height. If you display this html in Explorer 6 or Firefox 3 on Windows XP, the text block is taller. Why, and how would I make them the same height--i.e. the exact height of the image, 117 pixels.

The original html is being generated by TinyMCE in Joomla 1.0. This simpler version has all the Joomla gunk stripped out, but still has the key html and renders incorrectly--the right hand (3rd) cell in the second row of the table is taller than the first cell containing the image.
I've changed all the angle brackets to brackets so the ask wysiwyg editor doesn't render the html:

[!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"]
[head]
[title]TEST[/title]

[/head]
[body]

[table border="0" cellpadding="0"]

[tbody][tr][td colspan="3"]HERE IT IS[/td][/tr]

[tr style="height:117px"]

[td style="width: 94px; height: 117px"][img

src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Robin_Hood_Memorial.jpg/180px-Robin_Hood_Memorial.

jpg" width="94" height="117" /][/td]

[td style="background-color: #ffffff; width: 1px"] [/td]

[td style="font-size: 8px; line-height: 2.0; color: #ffffff; background-color: #000000; height: 117px; width:

94px"]Why[br /]on earth[br /]doesn't this[br /]work?[/td][/tr][/tbody][/table]

[/body]
[/html]

Merging tables in mysql

special-k — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:36:48 -0800

How do I merge three tables in mysql with duplicate entries for the primary key? I want to merge tables 1,2, and 3.
Each one has a field called ID (the primary key) which is set to auto_increment.

I want to merge all three tables into one. However, I cannot merge because mysql coughs up a duplicate entry on the primary key.

I'm guessing that the solution would be to insert a new field into table two that is Total number of records in table 1 + ID (and then do a similar thing with table 3). After that I would delete the ID field and make the new field the primary key. How do I do this?

Is there an easier way?

Tools for a simple staff directory on PBwiki

lillygog — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:53:18 -0800

I need to transform a big HTML table into something easier to update and maintain. Bonus: I'd like to put it (or its display widget) onto our staff wiki page. I've got a staff wiki and would like to put our staff directory up on the wiki. We're using free PBwiki hosting, since that's our best option for web space right now. Unfortunately, any sort of database-driven solutions requiring actual web coding are beyond us -- I fiddled with style sheets years ago and understand some things in a conceptual sense, but am not a web developer. So think easy, painless web tools that would be easy for a small, non-technical shop to maintain, and easy for staff without HTML knowledge to update.

The staff directory is currently a gigantic (over 175 entries) HTML table. Yay. Simply pasting the HTML into the wiki doesn't work because editing those giant tables is notoriously difficult, and I'd like to make this as easy for staff as possible. I'm not entirely a fan of wiki table formatting, either, because I feel like you're still sticking your data into a hard-to-update, un-transformable format.

So I decided that a spreadsheet would be easiest, based largely on Google Docs' ability to embed in web pages and export to .xls, .cvs, .html, .pdf, and so on. Plus everyone's familiar with Excel, and you can change rows and columns all you want. However, some don't want to use Google Docs because that requires setting up yet another account and password -- a legitimate concern.

Is there something I'm missing? Have you heard of any other web tools, shortcuts, simpler ways to do this? I guess what I'm trying to do is create a PBwiki table without being stuck in table formatting, if that even makes sense.

@#$%#$ Word!

ottereroticist — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:29:30 -0800

MS Word 2004 for the Mac: Annoying unexpected behavior when editing tables. WTF Filter: Copying and pasting rows within a table unexpectedly results in separate tables.

For example, if I select three rows, and either drag or cut&paste those rows to a different point in the table, the three rows are inserted as a separate table, not as rows in the existing table.

The new table is contiguous with the original one, with no paragraph mark between them. But if I choose Select Table, the moved rows are not selected. Instead, they have a dotted outline of their own, along with their own "handle" (little box with arrows at the upper left corner).

This is causing formatting and display problems. More importantly, it is causing me to doubt my sanity.

I have been using Word for many years and this version since 2004, and I consider myself an expert user. And yet I've never seen this behavior before.

I expect Word to move the rows within the table, not to create a new table. Could Word really have just started acting this way? Or have I just never noticed this behavior before?

Most importantly, how can I reliably cut and paste rows of a table within that table without seemingly creating a separate table?

(Version is 11.3.5, if that matters.)

I'm looking for an objectively based survey of websites which use css-based positioning versus tables as layout.

jeremias — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 06:42:04 -0800

I'm looking for an objectively assessed survey of websites which use css-based positioning versus tables as layout. I'm not looking for inspiring sites or well-designed sites, just a recent survey of websites using css-based layout. Ideally it would be something like this w3schools statistic chart on Browser statistics and ideally it would also offer a comparison of table-based layout sites. My guess is anyone doing this would be using a representative sample as the sheer number of sites is overwhelming.

One table to rule them all?

urbanwhaleshark — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:12:52 -0800

Can you help structure my oracle database appropriately? I'm writing an helpdesk application that supports n types of call. A call is logged with the system through an HTML form.

There are certain properties common to each calltype (ID, datelogged, dateclosed, owner, status, for example), but beyond that each calltype has a completely different form. Calltype1 may just have a notes field. Calltype2 may have a notes field plus 10-15 other fields that allows the user to add in more specific information particular to that calltype.

My question is: should I have one table for the common call information and a separate table for each calltype, or one big table that contains all the call information covering the fields of all calltypes? I guess my concern is that I'm adding extra complexity to the database by using many calltype tables to spare what I see as wasted space in the big calltype table.

Is my concern justified?

Lots of white space before HTML table

Joleta — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:08:09 -0800

How do I get rid of lots of extra white space before a table (in Internet Explorer). I set up a web site for a friend's nonprofit. This page looks fine in Firefox, but there's a lot of white space above the table in Internet Explorer (6 & 7). I used a free template to set up the site, and I'm still exploring the mysteries of CSS, however I'm using a table for actual tabular data here, not for layout. There's nothing between the closing /P tag of the paragraph above and the TABLE tag, and there's no extra space at the top of the table. If I put a border around the table, I can clearly see that the white space is above the table, not within it. I did try this without the closing /P tag before the table, and that didn't make any difference. Following some hints I found by Googling "space before tables," I removed all the line breaks from the HTML table code, which didn't make any difference. Is there some intrinisic difference between how Firefox and IE handle the space before tables? And what, if anything can I do about this?

A problem of sorts

juva — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:12:39 -0800

This is a very basic Word 2003 question. I have a list of 50 countries in descending alfabetical order. I've used the "convert text to table function" in Word (2003) to put them in a table (5 columns, 10 rows). Up to here, everything is fine. However, they've been automatically sorted alphabetically from left to right and then from top to bottom (first by column and then by row). I want them to be sorted alphabetically the other way around (top to bottom and then left to right - by row and then column). Is there any way to do this automatically without having to manipulate the data or adding it manually to the table? It's a very simple table and it wouldn't take a very long time but I'm just curious to see how others would tackle this very simple problem.

Thanks

Converting Word tables from Mac to Windows

Idiot Mittens — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 08:00:47 -0800

How do I get tables from a Microsoft Word document on a Mac to transfer properly to Word on a Windows computer? I'm on a Mac OS X version 10.4.10 and I'm trying to make a thesis compatible with Windows XP. Specifically, the vertical tables I creating in Mac Word are not showing any outlines, while the ones I originally created in Windows Word are fine.

I got a warning on Mac Word that said my compatibility options are set to Word 6.0/95. When I go into the preferences box, into the compatibility options, it is currently set to "custom" and none of the accompanying boxes are checked. I changed it to "2000-2004 and X", but when I press okay and go back in, it's back to "custom."

I also tried just checking all of the boxes and pressing okay, but the problems remain.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Need help developing a small relational db

desjardins — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:52:39 -0800

Help me properly set up a very small relational db. This is a teensy bit over my head, so mainly I want to establish that I'm not going terribly wrong before I get too far into this. The data is organized as follows:

One location -> many goals
One goal - > many projects
Each project -> many criteria (the criteria are the same across all projects)

Different locations can have the same goals, and I guess this is where I'm getting stuck. I have a LocationID table, and a GoalID table. Do I add fields for multiple goals in the location table? Or do I add fields for multiple locations in the goal table? Also, various locations can have the same type of project, so I have the same dilemma with the ProjectID table.

I have Access 2003. I cannot buy or learn a new DB program right now.

Thanks MeFi!

How do I get my table rows to stay clumped in fives?

bokinney — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:49:37 -0800

How do I get a the rows in a table to stay clumped in fives even if I add or change the data?I have a long list of data that I need to arrange in a table, and I want the rows grouped together in fives. I'm currently working in Microsoft Word, and what I've got looks something like this Google Doc. I want the table(s) to stay grouped like this even if I add, delete, or change the data. If I just use the Word tables, adding a new line to a group will just create an extra row. I recorded a macro in Word, which allowed me to simplify the process somewhat, but I need something easier.

I also tried linking the Word document with an Excel file that contains the raw data. This works, but I think it would require me to copy and paste each individual cell from Excel in order to get the formatting I need, and I have a lot that I need to do.

Are there any easier ways to do this? I don't need to use Word. I can use any Microsoft Office program, including Access, if it would simplify things. I can do as much work as I need to up front, but the editing process needs to be as simple as possible, because the people in my office who will be using this have only the most basic computer skills.

Thanks so much for the help!

Indesign Tables Drivin' Me Nuts

luriete — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:07:40 -0800

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.

Help me find a table!

Asbestos McPinto — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 12:02:38 -0800

Looking for unique furniture in the Pacific NW. My SO and I are in the market for a dining room table/chairs and I don't want it to be a run of the mill piece. I am looking for things like salvaged/entombed wood, antiques anything that can make it more one of a kind and less assembly line.

I am in based Portland but I am totally willing to travel to view furniture in Seattle or even Bosie, if need be.

I have gone to ECO PDX and liked what I saw but the tables were mostly too large as I am looking for something that can seat between 4 and 8 folks.
Thanks!

Please help me move from tables to divs in a clear way?

Kickstart70 — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:17:27 -0800

How do I do multiple sets of multi-column divs w/ CSS inside other multi-column divs? More details in first comment. This issue has bugged me for a while, and I've usually resorted to table to get away from CSS columnar hideousness

Here's a graphic depiction of what I want to accomplish.

I've managed to make A, B, C, and the unlabelled footer happen with directions I've found using float (left and right, and clearing for the footer), but when I try to use the similar structure for D-H, it fails horribly.

What I eventually want to accomplish is that d-h could be a large (and not previously defined) number of entries, so any solution should take that into account.

Thanks!

How to Get A Poker Table Reserved at a Casino?

plaidrabbit — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 17:54:44 -0800

GamblingFilter: How does a person reserve a poker room at a casino not in Atlantic City or Las Vegas? I may be helping my brother's best man plan his bachelor party/guys night out/what-have-you.

My brother and his friends are seminary students, so their list of vices are short - but a few drinks and poker are on there, so I'm trying to cater to this. However, I'm at a loss as to how I look into booking a table at a casino outside of Louisville, KY.

Their websites are no help, except telling me that they have tables and they're open.

So, what's the deal? Is there usually a minimum blind, requirements to up the blinds, time limits? Reservation fees if the blinds are low? Do some places even do this? Do I just give them a call? Help!

making a kotatsu

Electric Elf — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:21:42 -0800

I want a kotatsu, but can't afford to ship one from Japan. I'd like to make my own if possible, but don't know where to start.

The Deprecated "start" Attribute and Validation

juiceCake — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 17:51:54 -0800

Just completed a site, fully CSS for type, layout, print, XHTML, etc. Every page validates except for two. The reason. The start attribute is deprecated. Problem is, I can't find a replacement for it in CSS. There seems to be some debate about this. Why is something that is semantic meant to be controlled by the code that governs the presentation of the content? I understand preventing the display of numbers in an ordered list, but is there a CSS method to designate what number to start with? I could only find debate about the subject but no solutions (well, no solutions that weren't overly elaborate and bizarre.)

Many of the pages in the site use ordered lists (for all the menus in fact, save the Wine List), but the pasta menus require the numbers to be visible. Anyone have any suggestions?

Fix my MS Word table!

exceptinsects — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 14:33:52 -0800

How can I get the cells in my MS Word table to "stick together"? It keeps putting page breaks in weird places, leaving a single cell stranded at the top of a page. It seems like only some of the cells are infected with this standoffishness--most of them flow together just fine.
Does anyone have a clue how to fix this? I am spending way too much time trying to figure this out and am on the verge of doing something desperate.

Mozilla Tables

moonbird — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 19:50:05 -0800

Mozilla problem: weird tables (come inside, fellow coding geeks) I'm doing a site redesign and in Mozilla only, text from the blog is overlapping and overextending the table midway through the page. All of my tags appear to be closed, so I'm a bit stuck, and tired... don't want to self link blatently so my site is on my profile page. I've done the html validator, which caught several errors, but not this one it seems... Appreciate your help in advance!

PS> I'm not able to code CSS well at this point, so I've got to keep it html for now...