Make table from existing text

Nothing is perfect! This is where you can post your ideas and wishes for functions you'd like to see in Help & Manual. Current version only please (H&M7).

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Tobias Escher
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:32 pm

Make table from existing text

Unread post by Tobias Escher »

Hi!

I would like a feature where H+M would create a table using existing text.
Each new line would be a new row in a table. ";" "," and "tab" would be interpreted as a new column.

So
a
b
c

would result in a table with three rows, filled with a, b and c.

a;1
b;2
c;3

would result in a table with two columns and three rows.

I need to do this manally right now for thousands of lines of text and it is a huge pain ;)

EDIT: For me it would be VERY important that this can be done with existing text already in the topic. A TSV/CSV importer would be great as well, but that would not really help in this situation.
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Tim Green
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Re: Make table from existing text

Unread post by Tim Green »

Since you can paste tables from Word you can do this by converting the text to tables there and then pasting it into Help & Manual. 8)
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Martin Wynne
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Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: Make table from existing text

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Tobias Escher wrote:I would like a feature where H+M would create a table using existing text.
Each new line would be a new row in a table. ";" "," and "tab" would be interpreted as a new column.
I would second this request.

However, please not those delimiters, which may be needed in the text. I suggest the pipe character (| - Shift+Backslash) is the obvious choice, as it is clearly a divider, and is seldom used in plain text.

Martin.
Tobias Escher
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:32 pm

Re: Make table from existing text

Unread post by Tobias Escher »

I do not have Word, but I will try in OpenOffice.
Would such a feature be hard to implement? Not having to copy everything Work, transform it and copy it back and adding a 2nd column would save days of work.
Again, we are talking about several hundred tables that need to be created. This is one of the features that would easily be worth an upgrade price for me simply because it saves hours each day.
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