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