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Indenting text in a table

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38 comments

  • Official comment
    Mike

    Fantastic news, all!

    A recent release to Workiva has now made ruer bars available in Documents (and Presentations). You can now add a hanging indent to your table cells, both individually or in bulk. 

    As always, thanks so much for your patience and feedback. Happy early Thanksgiving! 🦃 🥧 🤗

  • Mike

    Hi Lena!

    Thanks for reaching out. I'm happy to look into this for you. Quick question, do you know if a hard return is in that cell? When I tested, if I had a return in that cell, it seemed to ignore my indentation, whereas when the line returned on its own it seemed to obey my indent settings.

    It can be hard to tell if there is a return there, but simply clicking inside the cell and backspacing should remove it, if its there.

    Let me know if this helps resolve the issue or you have any additional questions for me. Thanks and have a great day in the meantime!

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  • Lena L

    In the sample I sent you, I did not enter a return and the paragraph indentation settings do not seem to do anything, i.e. it is always flush to the left.

    I did figure out a work around by doing a hard return (ALT-Return) and then manually typing 2 spaces in front of the second line.  However, this means that I have to break the link. (in this table the text was entered in another spreadsheet and linked to a few spots in the Document so we only entered that data once.)  Because with the link in place I cannot force a hard return and enter extra spaces.  Thanks.

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  • Lena L

    Hi Mike,  Wondering if you have any further follow up to this question?  I don't have a return in the in the cell.  If I just let it to the automatic return because the line is too long within the cell, then I cannot get it to do a hanging indent on the second line.  The paragraph formatting does not seem to work on text within a table cell.  

    Also, when I am in a table, the "indent" triangles are not available in the ruler.  Therefore, I cannot adjust the indents to text in a cell.  This is hard especially when there multiple levels.

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  • Mike

    Hi Lena,

    Thanks for the follow up. We've been doing some testing and indeed, I see what you mean. It appears when you link from the a source that a particular indentation, it does not seem to carry over all the same indentation correctly. In your case, it only seems to have the 0.25 indent for the right alignment, but not the first line indent of -0.125. This is then troubled greater by the fact that once its linked, you can't change destination's formatting all that much, at least in terms of indentation. Pasting with the formatting doesn't seem to bring over the formatting completely either.

    I've created a ticket to for our Support Team to work on and see if we can't put out some sort of fix on it. Thanks for bringing to our attention and I'll be in touch if I have any questions, and with any updates. Chat with you soon!

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  • Lena L

    Hi Mike,

    Thank you for your response.  However, I also have another issue with formatting an indent in a table when the text is not linked.  See the following example:

     

    In this example the text is just typed in the cell.  The text split up in two lines because it is too long for the table cell.  However, despite using paragraph properties add an indent for the second line.  There is no indent.  Also in the ruler up top there are no triangles to help you adjust the alignment and indenting.  Could you also look into this issue? Thanks.

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  • Mike

    Good call there Lena L. Thanks for providing a screen grab. I'll certainly add that additional info and we'll look into it.

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  • Jennifer Haddock

    Hi Mike, any updates on when you expect this issue to be resolved?

    Thanks,

    Jen

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  • Mike

    Hi Jen,

    Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I've been connecting with the team who was looking at Lena's original issue and the good news there is they have seemed to identify the fix and are currently working on it. I don't have a timeline as of yet for when this will be addressed, but I've extracted your request for better tracking. You can follow along there but I'll also let you know here when I have any more updates too.

    Thanks again for your continued patience and do let me know if you have any questions for me. Chat with you soon and have an excellent day! 

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  • Mary Lynds

    Hello,

    Are there any updates to the second line indentation question?  This is something we would like to do as well.

    Thanks.

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  • Mike

    Hi Mary!

    Thanks for reaching out. I just checked back on this ticket and the good news here is it is currently in process and should be available this quarter. I'll certainly keep this post updated as that becomes available, but you can also follow our What's New topic to stay up-to-date as well.

    Let me know what questions you have in the meantime. Thanks again for your interest and have a great rest of your day!

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  • Mike

    Hi all!

    Wanted to give a quick update here. A recent release to Wdesk included making paragraph text linking and link formatting flow through available. Both of these are also supported during transition as well. Thanks so much for your patience and feedback. Give us a holler if you have any questions in the meantime. Cheers!

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  • BD

    Hi,

    Any update on the fix that Workiva was working on? I still cannot indent text in a table whether it is linked or not.

    Thanks!

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  • Mike

    Hi BD!

    The particular fix for this issue was released somewhat recently, specifically relating to link formatting flow through. I was doing some testing to make sure your instance was working as expected. To confirm, you are selecting the text and then changing the indentation, like so?

    Let me know if I missed the mark here or you have any follow-ups for me. Thanks much and chat with you soon.

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  • Lena L

    Wow!! Mike, I am so excited!  All this time I did not know you have to select the text to make the indent work.  I have been selecting the cell and nothing happens!  Thank you,

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  • Mike

    I think I just realized this too, now that you mention it. I was taking that for granted as it was a force of habit for me. 

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  • BD

    Thanks it worked. For cells that are linked, I have to format the source for it to work.

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  • Michelle Redditt

    Hello, I am still having a hard time indenting the second line.  I must be missing something. The instructions above seem to accomplish indenting the first row in the cell, but I am trying to indent the second row (for example see row 31 of the screenshot above in Lena's comment). I chose -0.125 for the first line which sort of did the trick, but it moved the first couple letters in the first line out of visibility. What am I doing wrong?

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  • Lena L

    Hi Michelle,  

    I know what you mean.  I am still trying to figure out the difference between indenting the "text" (like when you select the text itself) and indenting the cell (like when you click on the cell to select it).  Have you try playing with the "Increase Indent" button?  I feel like that may fix your problem.

     

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  • Michelle Redditt

    Thank you! That got me closer! However, are you able to do this with a destination link in the publication?  I was able to do this in the workbook for the source link, but not for the destination link in the publication. With classic, to get around this we would break the link, format it with the indent in the publication, and then copy and past the link again with "apply formatting" deselected. So, I did the same here...but even after I adjusted the formatting when I relinked, it reverted back to having no indent even though I did not select apply formatting. 

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  • Lena L

    Hi Michelle,

    I see what you are saying.  I don't usually link text between 2 documents.  I have tried out your scenario and can't get the proper indent to work with the 2 cells linked.  Seems like the only way to have the proper formatting is to not have the cells linked.  

    I will leave it to Mike to see her has any better idea.

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  • Mike

    Well dang, I thought you were onto something there Lena L. I appreciate the extra effort. Let me take this back to the team and see what they can come up with. Chat soon. Thanks!

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  • Mike

    Quick follow-up while we're testing Michelle Redditt. We were able to achieve this by forcing a hard return in the cell where we want the line to break (ALT+Enter). Does this work?

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  • Michelle Redditt

    Just wanted to give you an update. While the hard return did work, it also only worked when the cell was no longer linked. However, using this option made the Edgar preview not look right since the tables are stretched for Edgar and the 2nd line indent wasn't appropriate in that view.  Ultimately, the best option seems to be to break the link, highlight the text in the cell, and format First Line to -.125 and Left to .125. I still hope that in the future we will be able to format linked cells this way.  It is nice to only have to update the workbook and have it flow to the document rather than have to update in two spots.

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  • Mike

    Hey all!

    Wanted to update everyone here that work on  ruler bar in next gen cells (Spreadsheets and tables in Docs and Pres) is planned to be available in mid Q3 2020. We'll certainly keep you updated as things change. Thanks as always and give us a holler if there are any questions. Cheers!

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  • Michelle Thompson

    Hi Mike - Can you give us an update on this and if available tell us how indent the second line of wrapped text when the text in the document is linked to a spreadsheet?  In Q3 we are using a classic document with spreadsheets.  We can't migrate to Next Gen documents until Q4 because of the lack of functionality in Support Binder.  All of the tables in our document are linked in spreadsheets and we would prefer to not have to unlink them to accomplish this.  Thank you!

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  • Mike

    Hi Michelle!

    Currently the ruler bar / hanging indent option is not yet released, though it should be made available soon, certainly within this quarter. The good new here is I do have a workaround for you in Classic. To add that hanging indent to your linked value, follow these steps:

    First, apply the indent to another cell in that table, or another table. This can even be temporary, as we are using this to access the Painter tool. Next, using the the Painter tool, apply the indented formatting to the cell(s) with the destination link.

    If this does not work, or you have any follow-ups, just let me know and I'll be happy to assist. I've also connected your request for this feature in next gen with our Product Team and we'll be sure to keep you posted here with updates. Thanks again and have a happy Friday!

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  • Nancy Lorts

    Mike - Am I understanding correctly that the hanging indent option is not available in Next Gen? We just transitioned to Next Gen and did not realize this type of format would not transition to the new document. Will it be available before we file our 9/30/2020 10-Q? And, when it is available, if the text is linked to a formula in the spreadsheet, where do I have to put the formatting - document or spreadsheet? In classic, I put the formatting in the document only. Thank you.

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  • Michelle Redditt

    Nancy, You are able to format the 2nd line indent in Next Gen as shown above as long as you have it set to include link formatting . For example, while in the specific cell in the spreadsheet go to paragraph properties and set the indentation for the first line to  -.125 and left indentation set to .125. Then go to the "Formats" tab  and make sure that the "Include link formatting" box is checked. Then, once you publish the links in the spreadsheet, the second line indent will show up in your in your destination link in your document. I noticed that the files that I recently transitioned to Next Gen (the 10Q) already had that box checked. However, my files that I transitioned several months ago (earnings release was our first to transition) do not have that box checked, so I had to manually check the box to get it to work. I assume because the earnings release was transitioned before this option became available? Anyway, I totally missed that whole box checking thing ...even though Mike did reference the update above :) So, hopefully this will help someone else from making that mistake!

     

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  • Christy Mazza

    Is this hanging indent solution only applicable to linked text in tables within documents?  We have several tables that were created and are updated directly in our document, and aren't linked from anywhere, and I can't figure out how to do a hanging second line indent. Thank you!

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