Custom Forms – Working with Tables

Introduction

Using tables to format data is a very popular option inside the LoanPro custom forms editor.  There are lots of options you can use to customize tables.  This article will cover your table options in the custom forms editor.  There are lots of options you can use to customize tables.  This article will cover your table options.

Insert a Table

Inserting a table into a custom form is relatively easy.  Either use  Insert Table from the Table menu, or use the menu that’s a part of the general edit tools.

Mouse over the grid to select the number of rows and columns you want.  Once enough rows and columns are blue, click to insert the table.

Table Borders

It is important to know that cell spacing, the space between different cells in a table, can affect the way your border looks.  If you want to change the cell spacing value for a table, you can change it in table properties.  Choose Table properties from the Table drop-down.  Enter a numeric value for Cell spacing.

You can use the table properties to give all the cells in the table a uniform border.  Access the table properties again, but enter a numeric value for the border property this time.

Once you have a border, you can use the merge cells option to customize the border around cells.  To merge cells, highlight the cells you want to merge and choose Cell > Merge Cells from the Table menu.

You can also change the borders for individual cells but this requires more knowledge.  To change any property for a single table cell, put your cursor in that cell and choose Cell > Cell Properties from the Table drop-down.

To change the border, go to the Advanced tab inside of cell properties.

Here you will have four options: Border width, Border style, Border color and Background color.  Using these fields, you may create a custom boarder for each individual cell or group of cells. For the color fields, you may enter color names (e.g. blue) or a hexadecimal color value (e.g. 0088cc). Select for more color options.

The border for an individual cell is different than the border for the table as a whole in HTML.  To manipulate the border for individual cells, you also have the option to work with CSS styles.

This option may be preferred if you need to update a lot of cell borders within a form, but will require some knowledge of HTML.  These properties can be entered in the source code HTML of a form by selecting . Here are the relevant styles:

• border-color
  • Value can be any simple color name (e.g. blue) or a hexadecimal color value (e.g. #e5e5e5).
• border-width
  • Value should be a number and a unit of measure (e.g. px).
• border-style
  • Value should be solid, dashed, or dotted.

If a border exists for the table, you will only be able to change the color of the border for the cell.  If no table border exists, you can change all of the properties for the cell.  If you want to make specific changes to only one cell border, you can use top, bottom, left, or right as part of the style to specify which of the 4 borders you want to change (e.g. border-left-color).  To specify a change to a border, enter the property, followed by a colon (:), then the value, followed by a semicolon (;).

Like this:

border-style: solid;

So, for example, if we want to make a simple black border on a cell, we can enter the following into the Style field:

border-color: black; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid;

The result will look something like this:

To simplify, you can also enter all of the styles at once like this:

border: 1px solid black;

The complete bordered cell in the HTML of the form would look something like this:

You may make a similar cell but with a dashed border that is 2 pixels (px) thick by entering:

border: 2px dashed black;

It may be that you want an irregular border pattern.  For this, you will have to enter the border instructions for each cell, one at a time.

To accomplish this, the following styles have to be entered for the cells

Cell TR – border: 1px solid black; border-right: none; border-bottom: none;

Cell TL – border: 1px solid black; border-left: none;

Cell BR – border: 1px solid black; border-top: none;

Table Content

Table columns will automatically resize when you enter content into any one cell.  The table columns have widths that are dynamically calculated based on the content of the table.  You may choose to set the column widths yourself using table cell properties.

You will also notice that the content entered into table cells is left-aligned and is right against the table border.  You can set a property for cells that will determine the space between the border and your content.  To set this for an individual cell, you may edit this in the HTML source code and entering the following property in the specific cell element

padding: 30px;

In the example, 30px is used, but you can change the numeric value to give more or less space.

Rows and Columns

You can add or delete columns or rows from your table.  You can also edit table rows.  If you click inside of a cell, you will see a pop-up of quick cell options

The options are as follows:

The row menu found in Table > Row gives you options to add, and delete, but also gives you options to modify all the cells in a row.

The options are:

• Insert row before – This inserts a row before the row where the cursor is located.
• Insert row after – This inserts a row after the row where the cursor is located.
• Delete row – This deletes the row where the cursor is located.
• Row properties – This gives you access to properties that can be changed for all the cells in the row.
• Cut row – This will remove the row, but make it available to insert with one of the paste options.
• Copy row – This will copy the row and make the copy available to be inserted into the table using one of the paste options.
• Paste row before – This will paste a cut or copied row above the row where the cursor is located.
• Paste row after – This will paste a cut or copied row below the row where the cursor is located.

The row properties let you update the row.

You have the following general options:

• Row type – You can choose if a row should be a Body (typical) table row or a header row.
• Alignment – This option lets you choose the text alignment (left, center, right) for text in the cells of the row.
• Height – Input a numeric value for the height of the row.

You also have these advanced options:

• Border style – You can select a border style for the row.pi
• Border color – Enter a text color (e.g. blue) or a hexadecimal color code (e.g. #e5e5e5) to change the color of the borders of the cells in the row, or select the checkered icon to see more color options.
• Background color – Enter a text color (e.g. blue) or a hexadecimal color code (e.g. #e5e5e5) to change the color of the background of the cells in the row, or select the checkered icon to see more color options.