Getting tables into UR

[ashwken]

Running MS Office 2000 SP-3 at Home (source of screens), MS Office 2003 SP-2 at Work, Win XP Pro SP-2 on both. I am seeing similar behavior on both systems.

I wanted to share what I've found from working with Excel and Word as a source of Table creation and bringing those tables into UR (as RTF). Attached are a series of screen shots that will be discussed below.

Screen - Table to UR - 01.png | Excel
This is the original table as created in Excel. For this screen shot I've used a heavy width line style for both the grid and border lines (normally I use the "normal" line width).

Screen - Table to UR - 02.png | UR - from Excel - 01
From Excel I selected the desired range, then copy/paste in UR. Although text and column/row formatting is preserved, the grid and border lines have been lost.

Screen - Table to UR - 03.png | UR - from Excel - 01
Here I've selected the entire table and the underlying structure is revealed.

Screen - Table to UR - 04.png | UR - from Excel - 02
Here I've gone back into Excel and removed the grid and border lines, selected the desired range, and copy/paste into UR anew. It would appear that under these conditions the RTF Editor is providing a default grid and border for display purposes.


Screen - Table to UR - 05.png | Word
Here I've gone back into Excel and added the grid and border lines (normal width), selected the desired range, and copy/paste into Word. Although Word does allow for setting Cell Margins (cell padding ???) this doesn't appear to be evenly applied, even after selecting a column and invoking auto-expand the right-hand margins for "Contact Info (UR)" and "Info Item" do not appear to be influenced by these setting (0.03" for top, bottom, left, right). This holds true even when I increase the overall width of the table.

Screen - Table to UR - 06.png | UR - from Word
From Word I've selected the entire table and copy/paste into UR. The grid and border lines are preserved. But it appears that the Cell Margin settings are being ignored. The word-wrap seen in some cells appears to be due to the overall width of the of the table, moving the Data Explorer Pane to the top of the screen thus allowing the UR Detail Pane to have full screen width does not impact these cells.


Screen - Table to UR - 07.png | UR - from Excel - 01
UR Print Preview.

Screen - Table to UR - 08.png | UR - from Excel - 02
UR Print Preview. Interestingly, if you look at these two Excel previews in succession (Windows Preview) you'll notice that the tables are of different height, apparently due to the unseen grid and border lines present in Excel - 01.

Screen - Table to UR - 09.png | UR - from Word
UR Print Preview. Although not all of the grid and border lines are showing in this Preview, they do appear fully entact in the final output.


For this final series of screen shots I printed each UR Item to pdf.

Screen - Table to UR - 10.png | UR - from Excel - 01

Screen - Table to UR - 11.png | UR - from Excel - 02

Screen - Table to UR - 12.png | UR - from Word


Conclusions
Table creation and formatting is much easier in Excel, and if you want grid and border lines you need the extra step of bringing the Excel table into Word. Just depends on what you want in your final output.


UR Install Info:
Ultra Recall Professional 3.5a
Registered to:
Windows version: 5.1.2600.2.0
Install path: C:\Program Files\UltraRecall
EncryptPDF.dll version 3.0.0.2
mimepp.dll version 3.0.4
pdf2txt.dll version 3.1.0.4
PolarSpellChecker.dll version 4.0.5.4
riched20.dll version 5.50.99.2050
SftPrintPreview_IX86_U_10.dll version 1.05
SftTree_IX86_U_50.dll version 5.06
SftTree_IX86_U_60.dll version 6.02
UltraRecall.exe version 3.5.1.3
unins000.exe version 51.49.0.0
Database filename: D:\Data - UR v.3x\test.urd
Database version: 3.2.0

[ashwken]

Originally posted by ashwken
Screen - Table to UR - 06.png | UR - from Word
...But it appears that the Cell Margin settings are being ignored.

Let me correct this:

It appears that some Cell Margins are being ignored.

If you compare the Word import to the import for Excel - 02, there is definitely some Cell Margin present.

[J-Mac]

Were there actual screenshots here? Or just those text references?

I see a lot of posts that say they have screenshots but don't. kinook, are you removing screenshots in posts for some reason?

Jim

[ashwken]

J-Mac,

At the bottom of the original post is an Attachment (.zip) that contains the screens.

[J-Mac]

Originally posted by ashwken
J-Mac,

At the bottom of the original post is an Attachment (.zip) that contains the screens.

Oh, I see. I'm curious - why attach zip files, rather than simply post the screenshot inline? More than half the time users don't download these kinds of attachments. Since many times they turn out to be something you only need to look at once, it is usually more efficient to have them in the post itself.

Anyway, thanks.

Jim

[ashwken]

Originally posted by J-Mac
Oh, I see. I'm curious - why attach zip files, rather than simply post the screenshot inline? More than half the time users don't download these kinds of attachments. Since many times they turn out to be something you only need to look at once, it is usually more efficient to have them in the post itself.

The board only allows for one attachment (file or in-line image) per post.

In the case of a multi-image posting it is possible that the flow of the article could become broken by other users posting before the entire article is upload.

Also, in this particular case, the images were of the full screen (800x600), which when viewed on the same size monitor runs the image off screen and also forces the message width to conform to the width of the in-line image.

For my own taste I prefer the default message width, it makes for easier reading - the same reason newspapers and magazines are laid out as multiple columns per page, the same thing we're seeing in webpages through the use of CSS, narrower width is easy to read.

As for the low ratio between thread views and attachment downloads I'm not quite sure what to attribute this to - maybe the reader got the point w/o the visual, or the posting did not apply after opening it.

[quant]

Originally posted by ashwken
As for the low ratio between thread views and attachment downloads I'm not quite sure what to attribute this to

one reason might be that this counter is not "per ip", so when the thread grows and the same people return to it to read what's been added, then if 10 persons sees it 10 times, the view count is 100 ...

[ashwken]

Yes, as a thread "ages" there is no correlation at all.

[J-Mac]

Wow - it doesn't have to be limited to one attachment. And havin an image that large doesn't have to be a problem either.

@kinook - Why are you imposing such limits? vBulletin boards allow you to change that limit almost at will. This forum does not exactly attract the kind of user who posts needless images for the heck of it! All here are here because of UR and I'm sure they would love the opportunity to learn more from screenshots!

As for the image size, vBulletin also allows the administrator to offer several modes of attachment, including making images show as clickable thumbnails that expand when clicked once and shrink back to thumbs upon a second click.

If you want I can give you instructions on how to configure it.

Thanks!

Jim

[kinook]

AFAICT, the version of vBulletin we're using only supports one attachment (file or image) and an option to display image attachments inline (enabled).

[J-Mac]

Originally posted by kinook
AFAICT, the version of vBulletin we're using only supports one attachment (file or image) and an option to display image attachments inline (enabled).

I didn't realize you were using such an old version. V.2 has not been actively developed for move than five years! V.3 was initially released in early 2004. Latest is 3.72 - significantly changed/improved.

If I reported issues here on a version of UR that old, I think you'd probably spank me!

Oh well...

Thanks for the reply!

Jim

[kinook]

We actually have a license for v3.6. Unfortunately, it's not as painless to upgrade as UR. We tried twice so far but ran into several hurdles. It's on our list to try again at some point, but there really hasn't been much reason to.

[J-Mac]

OK. Only a suggestion; and a selfish one at that - I just thought it would be helpful to be able to see screenshots in the forum.

Thanks!

Jim