Handling table borders

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Handling table borders

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When you are defining borders around tables it is important to remember that there are two different "objects" in tables for which you can define borders: The table itself and the cell. Cell borders and table borders have separate settings.

 

prod_tip       Productivity Tip

If the thickness of your table borders looks off in your PDF output try selecting the screen device as the reference device for PDF output in View > Program Options > PDF.

Click to expand/collapseThe relationship between table borders and cell borders

The table border is outside the cell borders. If you set both cell and table borders the resulting border around the table will have the width of the cell borders plus the width of the table border.

For example, if you set both the cell borders and the table border to a width of 3 pixels the table border will have a width of 6 pixels, like this:

Table border width: 3 pixels Cell borders width: 3 pixels

Table border width: 3 pixels
Cell borders width: 3 pixels

If you want to create a table with borders that are the same as the cell borders just set a width for the cell borders and leave the table border set to 0.

Table border width: 0 pixels Cell borders width: 3 pixels

Table border width: 0 pixels
Cell borders width: 3 pixels

The following example does the opposite. Here the table border width is set to 3 pixels and the cell border width is set to 0 pixels. The grid lines are visible to show that it is the same table:

Table border width: 3 pixels Cell borders width: 0 pixels

Table border width: 3 pixels
Cell borders width: 0 pixels

Click to expand/collapseCells with different border settings

You can define different border settings for individual cells and groups of cells. Just select the cells whose borders you want to change, then display the table properties dialog and select the Selected Cells tab.

You cannot define different colors for cell and table borders in a single table. To create one or more cells with different colored borders insert a second table inside the first table and define different border color settings for the two tables. See Nested tables for details.

See also:

Nested tables

Table Properties (Reference)

How table sizing works (Reference)