Just as you use paragraph and character styles to format text, you can use table and cell styles to format tables. A table style is a collection of table formatting attributes, such as table borders and row and column strokes, that can be applied in a single step. A cell style includes formatting such as cell insets, paragraph styles, and strokes and fills. When you edit a style, all tables or cells to which the style is applied are updated automatically.

[Basic Table] and [None] styles

By default, each new document contains a [Basic Table] style that can be applied to tables you create and a [None] style that can be used to remove cell styles applied to cells. You can edit the [Basic Table] style, but you can’t rename or delete either [Basic Table] or [None].

Using cell styles in table styles

When you create a table style, you can specify which cell styles are applied to different regions of the table: header and footer rows, left and right columns, and body rows. For example, for the header row, you can assign a cell style that applies a paragraph style, and for the left and right columns, you can assign different cell styles that apply shaded backgrounds.

Cell styles applied to regions in table style

A.

Header row formatted with cell style that includes paragraph style

B.

Left column

C.

Body cells

D.

Right column

Cell style attributes

Cell styles do not necessarily include all the formatting attributes of a selected cell. When you create a cell style, you can determine which attributes are included. That way, applying the cell style changes only the desired attributes, such as cell fill color, and ignores all other cell attributes.

Formatting precedence in styles

If a conflict occurs in formatting applied to a table cell, the following order of precedence determines which formatting is used:

Cell style precedence

1. Header/Footer 2. Left column/Right column 3. Body rows. For example, if a cell appears in both the header and the left column, the formatting from the header cell style is used.

Table style precedence

1. Cell overrides 2. Cell style 3. Cell styles applied from a table style 4. Table overrides 5. Table styles. For example, if you apply one fill using the Cell Options dialog box and another fill using the cell style, the fill from the Cell Options dialog box is used.

For a video on using table styles, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0084.