# Table utilities

The menu Tables contains some functions for manipulating tables in addition to menu items for inserting table related HTML elements. This page describes the more advanced functions.

Table Template...
A function to easily build a table if it does not have too complicated a structure.

You are presented with a dialog box, as shown above, where you can specify:

- the number of rows and columns you want.
- whether you want table headers (TH) in the first row and/or the first column. The rest will be table cells (TD).
- whether or not you want TABLE tags. Skip the table tags if you want to insert new rows in an existing table.
- attributes for TABLE.
- attributes for TR. These attributes will be the same for every row.

You cannot use this function to build more complicated tables which requires attributes such as ROWSPAN and COLSPAN.

As an example, if you choose to create a table template with two rows and two columns, Alpha would insert

    <TABLE>

        <TR>
            <TD>|</TD>
            <TD>•</TD>
        </TR>

        <TR>
            <TD>•</TD>
            <TD>•</TD>
        </TR>

    </TABLE>•

Tabs to Rows...
Takes a tab-delimited table and makes HTML table rows. To use this function, first select the text to make table rows of before you choose Tabs to Rows from the menu.

When you use this function a dialog box is first opened, as shown above, where you can specify:

- Whether you want table headers (TH) in the first row and/or the first column. The rest will be table cells (TD).
- Whether or not you want TABLE tags. Skip the table tags if you want to insert new rows in an existing table.
- Whether several tabs after each other shall be treated as a single tab or not. You can put extra tabs between the cell to obtain straight columns and then check this option to get the HTML table you want.
- Attributes for TABLE.
- Attributes for TR. These attributes will be the same for every row.

Example: If you have the lines

    a   b   c
    d   e   f

in your document, "Tabs to Rows" will transform them into

    <TABLE>

        <TR>
            <TD>a</TD>
            <TD>b</TD>
            <TD>c</TD>
        </TR>

        <TR>
            <TD>d</TD>
            <TD>e</TD>
            <TD>f</TD>
        </TR>

    </TABLE>

Rows to Tabs
Converts table rows in a selection to a tab-delimited format. (This is "Tabs to Rows" backwards.) To use this, first select the table rows you want to convert. This function will remove the elements TR, TH and TD, and put one tab between each table cell. Everything in each table row will be put on one line. If the table contains cells of varying length you may have to change the tab size for the table to look pretty. This function does not remove the surrounding TABLE tags.
Import Table...
Function to import a tab delimited table from a file. This works just like Tabs to Rows except that the table is read from a file rather than being selected in the document.

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