Indent a table in a topic

[dalewood]

I inserted a simple table, 2 colums and 12 rows into a topic.

How do you indent a table?

I can left, right or center it, but I can't seem to select anything that allows the indent button to come live.

[LTinker68]

What version of Flare are you using? If you're using v4, then there's an option to specify a left margin in the Table Properties screen, but you need to set the table position to "left". (I think that's where the left margin can be set -- I don't have Flare open at the moment.)

If you're using an earlier version of Flare, first set the table position to "left". Then you can either open the topic in the Internal Text Editor and add a margin-left property to the table tag (affects on that table), or you can set a margin-left value for the main table tag in the stylesheet (indents all tables). If you're using a table stylesheet, then you might have to go with the inline method, because I don't think there was a way to set a table margin left value in older versions of Flare.

[Cecily]

What version of Flare are you using? If you're using v4, then there's an option to specify a left margin in the Table Properties screen, but you need to set the table position to "left". (I think that's where the left margin can be set -- I don't have Flare open at the moment.)

I have 4.1 and Table Props has an Align field, where you can select Left (or Center, Right or Default), but I can't see anywhere to specify a margin or indent on either of the tabs. Any more clues, anyone?

[LTinker68]

If you're using a table stylesheet, there are table margin fields on the "General" tab of the TableStyle Editor screen for that table stylesheet.

If you're not using a table stylesheet, then set the margin properties on the <table> tag in the Stylesheet Editor for the main topic stylesheet.

In either case, you have to have the positioning in the Table Properties screen set to "left" so that Flare doesn't put inline styles in the table tag in the topic, which will override the margin settings in the stylesheet, whichever stylesheet you're using.

[Cecily]

Thanks, but can you dumb that down a bit?

I'm not knowingly using table styles (slapped wrist). I just do Table > Insert Table and then specify the number of columns and rows and the AutoFit behaviour.

I've looked in the CSS in the internal text editor, but I don't think it's using table.defaulttable, because when I increased margin-left, it had no effect and table.headertable doesn't sound right and doesn't have a margin-left setting anyway.

So, obviously the "proper" answer is to read up on and use table styles, but is there a quick and dirty answer to apply a slight left indent to tables (currently they are outdented slightly, compared with everything else).

[Cecily]

Answering myself here, but hopefully it's useful for others (and indeed me, if I forget!).

In a table, I right clicked, selected Table Style > Edit Style.

This gave me a dialog with more options, including a General tab which included Table Margins (albeit so far off to the right so I barely knew it was there till I expanded the pane).

I set this to 7 pixels and all the tables in the project aligned with the body text and headings.

It all seems very obvious now... except that in another project, after selecting Table Style, the Edit Style and Reapply Table Style options were greyed out. What's that about?

[JAHartman]

I ran into this problem today using Flare v6.1. I am using a table style but I didn't want to change it in every topic. My topic was a special case where I needed to indent the tables under bullet style 1 paragraphs. To do this, I made a copy of my table style (BlueTable) then renamed the copy "BlueTable_B1" to indicate that it is to follow a B1 paragraph. I then opened the new table style and indented the left margin on the General page as stated above. After that I applied the new style to the table in the topic but it did not work. I had to open the Table Properties and set the Align field to "default" to make it read the setting in the new style.

[LTinker68]

I had to open the Table Properties and set the Align field to "default" to make it read the setting in the new style.

I think this depends on if you originally set the table to be centered or not. If you leave it at the default, which is basically left positioned, then everything is fine. However, if you set the table to be centered on the page, then Flare inserts inline styles on the table tag to handle the centering, and inline styles override stylesheet styles, so the table would always be centered. Set the align back to default removed those inline tags. I think there used to be a bug where it actually didn't remove them, but it sounds like that might have been fixed.

[berniexmeyer]

I tried setting the Box margin-left value to indent my (topic stylesheet based) tables (they were left justified, as advised), but there was no effect. However, when I set the Box padding-left value, that DID work.

[livetoski]

Thank you so much for this. This is something I have been muddling over and finding blind alleys on my own. What a relief. Thanks for taking the time to write it down. It made a difference for this lurker. Linda

[peckerdunne]

I had a slightly different problem, trying to align a table to the text in a list.
What I did was, insert a line into the list.
Cut and paste the table onto the line.
Change the li to li.nobullet class.

li.nobullet
{
list-style-type: none;
}

Seems to work OK for me.

[Nita Beck]

I had a slightly different problem, trying to align a table to the text in a list.
What I did was, insert a line into the list.
Cut and paste the table onto the line.
Change the li to li.nobullet class.

li.nobullet
{
list-style-type: none;
}

Seems to work OK for me.

You can also do the following:

First, select and copy the entire table.

Next, on the structure bars at the left, right-click the list item under which you want to place the table. From the context menu, select Make Paragraph Item(s). That will wrap the text of the list item inside a <p> block. On the structure bar, right-click that new <p> block and select Paste After from the context menu. The table is now pasted beneath the list item.

Last, delete the original table since you no longer need it.

[DocuWil]

First of all:
My opinion is that it should be possible to indent a table simply (I hoped this was done in Flare 7), but I do it as follows (It looks crazy, but ok):

In front of the <p> tag I create a blockquote (press Tab and select blockquote) which you can position easily.
Then I press Enter to create a 2nd <p> tag. So, you have now 2 <p> tags within the blockquote.
Now you can insert a table at one of the 2 <p> tags. Next you can delete the other <p> tag.

Note:
It is not possible to create the table first and then add the blockquote.

If someone has a better idea, keep me informed please

[LTinker68]

You don't need two paragraphs. Just insert the blockquote then insert the table. Or, better yet, create a table class that has margin-left set to 40px or something, then on a blank paragraph line insert a table and apply the class to the table tag in the show blocks area. No need to use blockquotes at all.

[DocuWil]

Hi Lisa

You don't need two paragraphs. Just insert the blockquote then insert the table.

This is not correct. If you do the blockquote disappears (at my place at least). In fact this is a bug.

Or, better yet, create a table class that has margin-left set to 40px or something, then on a blank paragraph line insert a table and apply the class to the table tag in the show blocks area.

Thanks, that is a good solution. Only disadvantage: I work with global links. So, I have created several classes now with different left-margins. Still I think it is the best solution!

[3lliot]

Margin-left didn't work for me either (with align=left) but padding-left did.

[LTinker68]

You don't need two paragraphs. Just insert the blockquote then insert the table.

This is not correct. If you do the blockquote disappears (at my place at least). In fact this is a bug.

Interesting. Guess I never tried that before (I tend to control the placement using the margin). Yeah, that's definitely a bug.

[aneedell]

There have been no additions to this discussion in quite some time, but I ran into the table-indent problem today and cannot quite work through it. I added this to my css:
table.Indent2em
{
padding-left: 2em;
border-color: #EDEFFA;
}
And this works when I publish to PDF. However, publishing to HTML5 ignores it. When I review the topic in Text Editor I see that Flare added the table like this: <table class="Indent2em" style="margin-left: 0;margin-right: auto;">
I am using padding-left because margin-left doesn't work at all -- seems that Flare ignores it. With padding-left I am getting the desired results, but only for PDF. Quite frustrating. Has anyone found a solution for this (I'm running Flare 2020)?