Inserting and managing tables

You can insert a range of pre-formatted tables into your document.

How to insert a table

Place your cursor in the provision that you would like to insert your table after. Note that this can include Parts, Schedules and other non-text provisions.

Select to insert a table by:

• Right-click menu Insert table

• From the upper tool bar, select Insert > Insert table

Specify your table properties in the dialogue box that appears. See Table properties below.

Click Insert when you’ve selected your criteria.

Lawmaker will insert the table on the line below the text in your provision.

Creating back-to-back tables

You can create back-to-back tables by:

• placing your cursor inside an existing table, and

• inserting a table as usual using the ‘How to insert a table’ instructions above

The new table will be inserted after the existing table.

To change the order, you can use the structure view to drag and drop the tables into a new order.

How to update table properties

With your cursor in the table, select to update table properties by:

• Right-click menu select Table > Update table

• From the upper tool bar, select Insert > Update table

Specify your changes in the dialogue box that appears. See Table Properties below.

Click Update when you’ve specified your criteria.

Lawmaker will update your table.

Table properties

With your cursor in the appropriate cell, select to insert a row or column by:

• Right-click menu select Table > Insert row before/Insert row after/Insert column to the left and insert column to the right

• From the upper toolbar, select Insert > Insert row before/Insert row after/Insert column to the left and insert column to the right

The system will insert the appropriate row/column to your table based on your cursor location.

If you insert a new row with your cursor in the table header, you will create a new row within the header.

How to delete a row or a column

With your cursor in a cell in the selected column/row, specify you would like to delete the column or row by:

• Right-click menu select Table > delete row/column

• From the upper toolbar, select Insert > delete row/column

The system will delete the selected row/column based on the cursor location.

If there is only one column or row left in the table, deleting it will delete the whole table.

How to delete a table

Place cursor in the table that you want to delete.

Click on Tbl block in the breadcrumb or select table from the structure view.

Press delete or backspace on your keyboard.

The system will remove the table completely from your document.

How to merge, unmerge and split cells

Merge cells:

Highlight the cells you wish to merge. Right-click and select Table > Merge cells

Unmerge cells:

Right-click in the cell you wish to unmerge. Select Table > Unmerge cells

Inserting table content

It is possible to fill in a table cell with either plain text or more structured content (through creating Lists).

To type plain text, simply click on the ‘Text’ placeholder and type.

Structured content in your table

With your cursor in the Text placeholder, press the Enter key to bring up the Content Completion Assistant, as you would when drafting provisions in the rest of the document.

The options should be ‘Paragraph’ and ‘List’.

‘Paragraph’ will insert a new unnumbered paragraph.

‘List’ can be used to create the appearance of Structured content, as well as bullet-point lists. When you select to insert a List, a window will appear prompting you to select list style from a range of options, which mimic the appearance of numbered provisions.

Select the desired option and click ‘Select’.

The new structured content will appear in your table with a ‘Text’ placeholder, in which you can start typing.

Making lines of text align across columns of a table

You may want to draft a table in which lines of text in multiple columns are aligned horizontally, as in the screenshot below.

There are two ways to achieve this: adding additional rows or inserting new lines that include a no-break space.

Adding new rows

The simplest way to have text in two columns align horizontally is to add a new row, and retype, or copy-and-paste, the content you want to align into the new row.

See How to insert additional rows or columns above.

Adding new lines that include a no-break space

if necessary, you can add blank lines to a table cell, in order to 'push' lines of text down the cell and force alignment with text in another column.

To do this, please do the following:

1. Start from an empty cell (if you have text in already, copy and paste it elsewhere so you have it to hand, then delete)

2. Place your cursor in the ‘Text’ placeholder

3. On the toolbar, select 'Special characters' (the infinity icon)

4. Click 'more symbols'

5. In 'Name of character to search for' type 'No-break'

6. Select the first option (entitled 'No-break Space (000A0)')

7. Click 'OK'

8. Press enter and select ‘Paragraph’ to add another paragraph

9. If you want more blank lines, repeat 2.-3. You can select ‘no-break space’ from the ‘recently used characters' menu.

10. When you have enough lines, insert your desired text.

11. Generate a PDF to check that it is aligned correctly.

You may need to experiment with adding more blank lines, or removing existing blank lines.