One of the recent enhancements to Author-it is the ability to use Quick Tables – a nifty little feature that enables you to quickly insert a table by choosing from a selection of already preformatted tables.
A quick table is simply a regular Author-it topic containing a preformatted table, with or without standard text. If you frequently use tables with specific formatting you can create a separate topic for each quick table, and then save that topic to your Quick Tables folder so that you don’t need to recreate the table each time that you want to use it.

Step One: Create the Quick Tables:

1. Create a folder to store your Quick Tables.
2. Create a new topic in the folder (using any standard topic template).
3. Insert a new table with the required number of columns, rows and formatting. You can set things such as the borders that are applied, the cell background color, text used inside the table (such as row headings), and the styles that are applied to the text.
4. Save the topic.

After creating the quick tables you need to tell Author-it which folder they are stored in.
Step 2: Assign the Quick Tables Folder:

1. Open a topic and under the Edit tab, select Table > Quick Tables then choose Change Folder for Quick Tables…
2. Select the folder you created a moment ago, and choose OK.

Once the folder has been assigned you are ready to insert the tables into your topics.
Step 3: Insert a Table Using Quick Tables:

1. Open a  topic and click where you want to insert a table.
2. Under the Edit tab, select Table > Quick Tables. A preview of each table is displayed.
3. Click on a table from the preview to insert it in your topic.

Voila! The table is added and already formatted as you want, ready for you to add additional data as needed.

Posted by Gretchen Rogers, Author-it Software Corporation