Displaying Wide Tables in Word

If you're using Author-it's default settings, your tables should ideally be no wider than 12 to 15cm (4.7 to 5.9in) depending on whether you are using Letter or A4 sized paper - Letter is wider, A4 is longer. Any wider than this, and your tables fall off the page. This is because the default settings use a wide left margin which doesn't leave much room for wide tables. There seems to be no way of altering the left margin of a table. The good news is you can control the left margin of a table for Word output.

How does table alignment work?

The left margin of a table cannot be changed in Author-it because it cannot be defined in HTML, and we like to be consistent in all outputs. However, you can control the left margin of the table in Word by using styles. As a document is being published to Word each table is automatically aligned to the left margin of the paragraph immediately preceding it. The alignment even takes into account if borders are on or off. If borders are on, the left border of the table is used, if off, the left margin of the text inside the table is used.

So how do I change the left alignment of a table?

All you have to do is apply a style to an empty paragraph immediately preceding the table in Author-it that maps to a style in your Word template that has a left margin set to the value you want for your table. Lets go through the steps required:

1. Create a new Style object in Author-it that applies only to Word. The easiest way to create a new style is to find one close to what you want, open it, then choose Object > Duplicate from the main menu. The default style called "AllowPageBreak" is a good one to use.
2. Name the style something sensible, like "WideTable" so you can easily identify its purpose. Make sure that you update the Style name in the Style Definition tab, Description in the General tab, and Map to style in the Print tab so they all use this name.
3. In the General tab make sure only Print is checked in the Include object in group box. This stops the paragraph appearing in any of your other outputs.
4. Now open your Word Publishing template.
5. Create a new style with the same name you used in the Map to style, set above. Once again you can copy the "AllowPageBreak" style if you want.
6. In the Font properties of the style set the Font size to 1pt. This makes the paragraph very small so you do not get extra spacing.
7. In the Paragraph properties, set the Left Indentation to the desired value. This will probably be a negative value. If using the default settings the margin of the document is set to 7cm (2.75in). If you want your table to start at 2.5cm (1in) from the edge of the page then the Left Indent would be -4.5cm (-1.75in). Set Right Indentation, the Spacing before and after all to 0. Also change to the Line and Page Breaks tab and make sure Keep with next is checked.
8. Save your style (do not apply it) then save your Word template.
9. Back in Author-it open/create a topic with a wide table. Add an empty paragraph immediately before the table and apply your new style to it.
10. Publish your document to Word and see the results.

You can create as many of these styles as you want for different table alignments. If you're working with tables on a regular basis, you can also create table templates to quickly create tables of a standard size and with consistent formatting.