InDesign 2017 adjusting leading in table

[Tracy_KG]

I have a document with a table that I have continually updated for a client for years. I just upgraded to ID 2017 and when I went to make a small change to the text in one of the table cells, the text was pushed down below the baseline causing it to be out of alignment with the text in the cells directly to the left and right in the same row. This also caused the table row to increase in height. I confirmed that "align to baseline grid" is turned off so that does not appear to be the cause of the problem. I have attached a screen shot from the document. You can see that "109**" is pushed down below the baseline and the row is now taller than the other rows. Any help would be appreciated.

[Barb Binder]

Could you share a screen of Table > Cell Options > Text and one of Table > Cell Options > Rows & Columns with those two cells selected?

[Tracy_KG]

Hi Barb! Here are the screen shots.

[Laubender]

Hi Tracy,

I cannot see a shift of the text in your screenshots in answer 2.

Interesting would be screenshots of the cells selected where the baseline went wrong.
As I can see from your sample screenshots a different cell is selected or a different undo state of the table might be selected.

About the cause:

Can you show hidden characters as well?

Maybe an additional character (white space) sneaked in with a different point size.

Here an example where the text with the numbers is in 8 Pt and the blanks added are in 10 Pt:

Regards,
Uwe

[Laubender]

Sometimes a single space character before the end-of-text marker is hard to spot.

Here an example where I set the size of one single space to 13 Pt wheras all other text in the table row is 8 Pt:

And even if the end-of-text marker isn't showing bigger than all other "regular" end-of-text markers your stray space could be formatted with a different size of text:

Regards,
Uwe

[Tracy_KG]

Hello Uwe! I have attached a screenshot with the rows changed to a fixed height and hidden characters revealed. As far as I can tell there are no extra spaces or different font sizes. I have used a style sheet for all of the text in the table so all the text has identical attributes. Sorry for the previous screenshot that showed the "109**" text in alignment, I did a workaround (overlaid a new text box with the edit) to get the job out the door to the client and forgot to recreate the problem before I grabbed the screenshot.

Thank you for your help!

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi Tracy,

there is something very odd going on here.

Without seeing the document, I cannot tell exactly.

Could you make a subset of your table available for download?

1. Select the row

2. Copy the selection

3. Add a new document

4. Add a new text frame to the new document

5. Select the insertion point of the text frame

6. Paste the contents of the clipboard

If available, add that document to your Dropbox account and post the link.
Maybe there is an override of the cell style that you cannot see.

( Yes, that's possible… )

Or: Select the first two cells in the row, go to the Cell Styles panel, click the applied cell style while holding the alt plus the shift key to get rid of any overrides.

Thanks,

Uwe

[Tracy_KG]

Uwe, your suggestion jogged my memory of a problem I had about two years ago in InDesign where the text in a document was wrapping around a non-existent object. No matter what I tried I could not fix the problem. I finally ended up copying and pasting the entire contents of the page into a brand new ID document and that solved the problem. I decided to try the same strategy for this current problem and yay, it worked! I am now able to modify the text without the baseline shifting. Maybe the old file was starting to become corrupt? Not sure but everything is working fine now. Thanks to everybody for taking the time out of your busy days to offer your help, it is very much appreciated.

[Laubender]

Hi Tracy,

glad you could move on.

Still I want to know what the problem with your original document was.
Don't delete it. If time permits, share it. At least the one table.

To do so make a duplicate of yout document, remove all pages whithout the one that holds the table.

You could send me a personal message through the forum so we could exchange links or mail addresses.

Just hover over my name and press the "Message" button.

Regards,
Uwe

[Randy Hagan]

It appears that the row of cells you have for the shifted elements is taller than the other three rows in your initial screen capture. And in the Rows and Columns tab for your Cell Options dialog that you are using relative settings for your Row Height: edit boxes.

Is there any reason why you can't use a fixed row height? If you can use that -- at least for the row you seem to be having problem with -- I suspect that might fix your issue. Failing that, sometimes juggling the Super/Subscript settings for your type can get you aligned the way you want things to be. The type fix will entail creating a custom setting with the Paragraph panel or developing a new "custom style" with your Baseline Shift: setting in the Paragraph Style Specifications panel's Advanced Character Formats tab if you think this may recur consistently on a continuing basis.

In either case, this may be one of those situations where you're going to have to fiddle with custom settings to get the result you're looking for from InDesign. Just fixing the problem is often more expedient than dwelling on what possibly could be the cause.

If this works for you, please mark this response as answered in this thread so it will be placed where it may help other users who might experience the same issue.

[Tracy_KG]

Hi Randy. Thank you for the suggestion for the fixed height table rows, I was really hoping that would solve the problem. Unfortunately the problem remains even with a fixed height row, sigh. Even with a fixed height of .2 you can see that the text is still pushed down below the baseline.

In order to make all of the content fit, I need to have a maximum row height of .16. If I change the height to anything less than .2, the text does not display. See image below.

I'm not sure what you mean about juggling the superscript options. I tried manually raising the baseline by 2pt which brings the text into alignment but only works if the row height is .2 or larger. As soon as I change it to .19, the "109**" text disappears from the cell, leaving the blue dot in its place. So even if I created a custom stylesheet with the baseline raised, that wouldn't solve the problem.

I may have to revert to using ID 2016, ugh. I really appreciate your help with trying to troubleshoot this.

[Jeff Witchel, ACI]

Just a wild guess here. It's possible that the Alignment (top to bottom) in the Cells that are off is different than the other Cells in the Table. You can select an individual Cell and change it's Alignment to the Top Indent, Centered, to the Bottom Indent or Justified.

Notice that in the screenshot below, "John" in one Cell is lower than the names in any other Cells. Select the entire Table and make the Alignment Center in all selected Cells and all of the type should line up in the Rows. If you don't like Center, choose some other Alignment for ALL Cells.