Creating a Stylish Table in Adobe InDesign: Step-by-Step Tutorial

Stylizing and Customizing Tables in Adobe InDesign: Step-by-Step Guide

Discover the step-by-step process of creating and stylizing a table for your design needs. This article explains the procedure starting from the initial construction of the table, data input, up to the final adjustment of styles and aesthetics.

Key Insights

  • Creating a table involves specifying the number of rows and columns, and deciding whether to use a header row or not. The table can then be drawn out in the design space.
  • Adding a title and data to the table requires using the selection tool, creating extra space, and typing the title and data in. The title can be customized to preferred settings, for example, font size of 16 points and bold.
  • The article also elaborates on the process of stylizing the table. This includes center aligning text within cells, adjusting the space, modifying the font size, changing the fill color, editing the lines, and adjusting the column size.

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In this video, we're going to continue working on our tables. If we pull over our Excel Spreadsheet, we can see that we have four additional elements that we need to add, and one that hasn't been included within the Excel Spreadsheet.

So let's create our table. On this page, we're going to create a table by going to Table > Create Table, and for our rows, we'll keep it at five rows and two columns. In this case, we're not going to use a header row. We'll then click OK, and we can simply draw out our table.

From here, let's utilize our Selection Tool and we want to add a title to this table. We can do this by adding a little more space to the bottom, and then double-clicking, we'll see the flashing cursor. If we hit the left arrow, we'll actually be able to type a title. We'll type Construction.

From here, we'll highlight Construction, center it, and change the font to 16 points and Bold, or whatever you prefer. Now we're ready to start adding to our table. From here, feel free to follow along with the Excel Spreadsheet or your sample, and I'll be back as soon as I'm finished. Once you've finished adding the top four, we're going to add this last row here, and we're going to add the Coordination.

Often it's not uncommon to get some last-minute data to add to a table. From here, we've now entered all of the data, and so we now need to stylize this a bit. We'll utilize our Selection Tool, and with it selected, we're going to select all of the rows by double-clicking, and we'll just drag a selection box over all of these cells.

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From here, we're going to center-align all of the text within the cells, but we'll see that they don't move. This is often because within Properties, it's still lined up to the Baseline Grid. We'll undo that, and see that they're all centered.

We'll also add a little space, moving it away from the left-hand column. Let's also stylize our text, bringing it up to 16 points. From here, let's stylize a bit more.

We'll reselect all of these cells, and let's change the fill to PD Color 2, or whatever you prefer. Next, let's work with our lines a bit. In this case, I don't want to have all of the lines on the outside, so we'll highlight all of these cells and again work with our lines.

Remember that whatever lines we have selected, we're going to be editing. In this case, let's remove all of the lines on the outside by setting them to 0, and we can see what this looks like. I kind of like that we don't have the big frame on the outside.

Additionally, let's select all of these again, and for our stroke on the inside lines, which we can click and select, let's change these to 0.5 and hit ENTER. This way, they'll be very faint inside. As one final stylizing step, let's select the left-hand column, and for our fill, let's change it to 50% and hit ENTER.

You see this? Here we've got a nice stylized table. Feel free to make whatever other modifications you prefer. In this case, I'm going to select Construction, go to our Properties panel, unalign it from the Baseline Grid, and then I'm just going to hit ENTER after to

Give it a bit more space. Let's also swap out our title, holding CTRL + SHIFT for our title, and double-clicking, we're going to type out Additional Services.

As one final change, let's change the size of this column. We're going to click on this center row here, and holding SHIFT, we'll drag to the right. Additionally, we've missed a couple dollar signs, and we've now completed our table. Well done. In the next video, we'll be creating our second table.

See you there.

Matt Fons

Adobe Instructor

Matt is a jack of all trades in the realm of marketing and an expert using Adobe’s Creative Cloud as the essential software for supporting students and clients. With experience in graphic design, photography, web design, social media planning, and videography, Matt creates impressive and comprehensive marketing strategies. In his free time, Matt and his wife enjoy surfing and hiking California’s Central Coast and traveling to countries around the world.

  • Adobe Certified Instructor
  • Adobe Certified Specialist
  • Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign
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