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EDIS Editor Tutorial - Part 2: Working With Tables 1

Howard Beck, Petraq Papajorgji, and Fedro Zazueta 2

The EDIS editor has comprehensive utilities to create, edit and import complex tables of

any size. This part of the tutorial will address each of these.

Creating a Table in the EDIS Editor

In this example you will create a simple table in the EDIS editor containing the

following:

Example

In the Outline Editing Pane, highlight Table by clicking over it.

2) Click on Edit and select New Table. A panel will open asking for the size of the table.

Enter 3 for rows and 3 for columns. Note that a line is not necessary for the caption, a

special field is provided for this. However, you will need one row for the header of the

table.

Screen shot

Screen shot

3) The Table Editor Panel will be displayed including an empty Table. The numbers for

the columns and rows are there for guiding purposes only and are not part of the table.

4) Click on the '+' button in the upper right hand corner of window.

Screen shot

The Table Editor Panel includes a menu and a toolbar. For details on the

functionality of these see the User's Guide starting on page 14.

5) Click the Field Editing button at the right of the Table Caption Field and type in the

table's caption. Note that you do not enter the “Table 1:” text. Table numbering is

automatically generated.

Screen shot

Close the Table Caption editor.

6) Enter the corresponding text into each of the cells in the table. If the text wraps around

in the cell, you can adjust the size of the cell by placing the cursor in between two

consecutive cells and dragging left or right as needed.

7) Apply styles to the text in the cells. You can select any text in the caption or a cell and

apply a style (bold, italic, underscore, centering, or alignment), add special symbols, or

hyperlink the text. In this exercise embolden the headers in row 1 and center the numbers

in column 2. You must select every cell individually and apply the style to the text within

the cell. You cannot select a row or column and apply the style at once.

In this exercise, make the Table headings (Line 1) bold by selecting one by one the text in

each cell and pressing the Bold button in the toolbar.

Center the numbers under Hydraulic coefficient by selecting one at the time and pressing

the Center button in the toolbar.

Screen shot

8) Define the Table Header.

9) The EDIS editor requires that for any table the rows that contain the table header be

designated. This is required to generate scrolling tables in the editor. This is particularly

usl when dealing with long tables. To define the table header click on Table > Table

Header efuin the menu. Enter the number of rows that contain the header. The header will

start with the first row up to the number of rows specified. In this example there is only

one row, so the Number of rows to use as a Table header is 1.

Screen shot

Setting Border Styles

You can set border styles for each cell or a group of selected cells. To format the cells in

this example follow these steps:

1) Remove all lines from the table. Select all cells and click on Table > Cell Borders and

Shading. Unclick all the check boxes to the right of Borders. Click OK.

Screen shot

2) To add a line above and below the header row, select the header row, click on Table >

Cell Borders and Shading and check the Top and Bottom Checkboxes. Click OK.

Example

3) To add a line at the bottom of the table, select the bottom row, click on Table > Cell

Borders and Shading and check the Bottom Checkbox. Click OK.

Screen shot

Importing a Table from Other Windows Applications

You can import a table from word processor or spreadsheet. This is especially useful if

you have already created the table or you are converting a document from a word

processor into the EDIS editor. Bringing tables in from another application requires a cut

and paste operation. When a table is imported into EDIS the structure of the table and its

contents are imported into the table. Styles are not imported.

In this example we will import into the EDIS editor a table created on an Excel

spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is in the example file Free Fall Calculations.xls.

1) Open the application in which the table resides initially, in this case, Excel. Highlight

the table and copy it into the clipboard.

Screen shot

2) Highlight Tables in the Outline Editor and click on Edit > New Table.

Screen shot

3) To copy the table from Excel, already in the clipboard, click the button Paste Table

From Clipboard. The table will be imported as shown below.

Screen shot

4) Reenter the Table's Caption

Notice that the first row of the table should be the caption. You must reenter the caption

and delete the first row. Reenter the caption as explained previously.

To delete the first row, click over the row number and press the Delete Row (button with

horizontal red bar) button in the Table Editor toolbar.

5) Set the table header. In the Table Editor Menu select Table > Table header and set the

Number of Rows to Use as a Table Header as 2. Notice that when you scroll the table, the

header rows remain in place.

Screen shot

6) You can now apply borders and other allowed styles to clean up the table if necessary.