InDesign

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Alternate strokes and fills in a table

You can alternate strokes and fills to enhance readability or improve the appearance of your table. Adding alternate strokes and fills to table rows does not affect the appearance of the table’s header and footer rows. However, adding alternate strokes and fills to columns does affect header and footer rows.

Alternating stroke and fill settings override cell stroke formatting, unless you select the Preserve Local Formatting option in the Table Options dialog box.

If you want to apply a fill or stroke to every body cell in the table, and not just alternating patterns, you can still use the alternating stroke and fill settings to create such non-alternating patterns. To create such an effect, specify 0 for Next in the second pattern.
Before (left) and after (right) alternating fills in a table

Add alternating strokes to a table

  1. With the insertion point in the table, choose Table > Table Options > Alternating Row Strokes or Alternating Column Strokes.
  2. For Alternating Pattern, select the type of pattern you want to use. Select Custom if you want to specify a pattern; for example, one column with a thick black line followed by three columns with thin yellow lines.
  3. Under Alternating, specify the stroke or fill options for both the first pattern and the subsequent pattern. For example, you may want to add a solid stroke to the first column and a Thick - Thin line to the next column, so that they alternate. Specify 0 for Next if you want the strokes to affect every row or column.
    Note: In tables that span multiple frames, alternating strokes and fills for rows do not restart at the beginning of additional frames in the story. (See Break tables across frames.)
  4. Select Preserve Local Formatting if you want formatted strokes previously applied to the table to remain in effect.
  5. For Skip First and Skip Last, specify the number of rows or columns at the beginning and end of the table in which you do not want stroke attributes to appear, and then click OK.

Add alternating fills to a table

  1. With the insertion point in the table, choose Table > Table Options > Alternating Fills.
  2. For Alternating Pattern, select the type of pattern you want to use. Select Custom if you want to specify a pattern, such as one row shaded in gray followed by three rows shaded in yellow.
  3. Under Alternating, specify the stroke or fill options for both the first pattern and the subsequent pattern. For example, if you selected Every Second Column for Alternating Pattern, you may want to shade the first two columns in a gray tint and leave the next two columns blank. Specify 0 for Next if you want the fill to apply to every row.
  4. Select Preserve Local Formatting if you want previously formatted fills applied to the table to remain in effect.
  5. For Skip First and Skip Last, specify the number of rows or columns at the beginning and end of the table in which you do not want fill attributes to appear, and then click OK.

Turn off alternating strokes and fills in a table

  1. Place the insertion point in the table.
  2. Choose Table > Table Options > Alternating Row Strokes, Alternating Column Strokes, or Alternating Fills.
  3. For Alternating Pattern, choose None, and then click OK.