Tables & Graphs in Item Text

[zargron]

I started to put this tip elsewhere as a reply to a general discussion post. However, halfway through I decided it is probably best put here and that maybe somebody might be able to use it...

UR's internal RTF editor doesn't support creating tables, but it does allow you to view tables. I've been having a little bit of fun displaying tables and graphs with the UR internal browser.

A little while ago, I had stored in UR a bunch of notes discussing a topic with a reasonable volume of data behind it. The data was summarised in Excel. To see the summary, I had to open the external document. I decided that I wanted to be able to click on an item within UR to see that summary instantly.

For the above scenario, I now do the following:
1) Use a spreadsheet tool (Excel) to summarise and format the data.
2) Create a text item and point the URL attribute to the spreadsheet file.
3) Copy & paste summary cells into the item text area, (whamo - I have a table!)
4) Convert any graph that I might have created to an image.
5) Copy & paste the image into the item text.
6) Write any further notes that I feel will benefit the summary.

NOTES
(A) With the URL attribute set, you don't have to remember where the source document is for your executive summary. You are only a couple of clicks away from opening it.

(B) You can format and edit text within the table without destroying the table. You (obviously) can't do much about manipulating table rows and columns.

(C) Admittedly, the UR content is NOT tied to the data. If the data changes, you need to manually update the content in UR. Personally I don't find this a problem since I generally focus on conclusions based on closed data.

(D) Some might argue that I should be editing the Excel document directly within UR. Sorry, me no like to do that.

(E) I find BTW that this act of deciding exactly what I want my "executive" summary to entail, helps me to make the summary even slicker.

(F) I've attached a screenshot from UR displaying a table and graph in the Item Text pane.