Tables in PDF output

[Jamie Bodley-Scott]

Hi using Standard_Manual_A4 to make a PDF version of my manual.
We have lots of tables in the manual and most of them are fineish.
We have one table only that is misbehaving badly:

Screen Shot 2015-11-02 at 17.24.37.png

Any suggestions how to fix?

Also do you have any suggestions or any best practice guide re the use of tables and ensuring that words do not wrap in column 1 and get split like
thi
s
I guess we have to set the column widths or some such. I have tried a couple of options: Autosize and size to fit on page; but both produced the results shown.
I do have some other tables where this is happening...........but only the one where we have 1 char width in column one.

Thanks.

[Tim Green]

Hi Jamie,

Yes, this is a column widths issue. Your table has been defined so that it doesn't fit between the fixed margins of the PDF page and since there is no adjustable width column it can't adjust automatically. Help & Manual throws up its hands in despair and makes ALL columns adjustable, and the result is what you see in your screenshot.

What you need to do is have at least one plain text column with an adjustable width so that the table can fluidly adjust to the page width when the PDF is rendered. You can do this quickly with the Lock Column tool in the Tables tab.

Important gotcha to be aware of: When you adjust column widths by dragging with the mouse, this sets BOTH affected columns to fixed width. If you need to have one of them fluid, you need to unlock it with the Lock Column tool after doing this!

See this topic in the help for more details.

[Jamie Bodley-Scott]

Tim
Thanks - set col 1 to 100 px and the whole table to autosize and it looks very nice now.
Not sure about the 'lock' thing though (I don't need it) - but I tried to 'lock' my col 1 and it changed the settings I had specified.