table composed from lines (drawing)

[czomberzdaniela]

I have a problem with a big table made of lines (vertical and horizontal) and text fields instead of normal word table with cells.



It has been exported from some program and now multiple lines need to be edites.

Is there any way of convertirng it into somethig editable ? Thanks in advance for help

[macropod]

Hi czomberzdaniela,

If you delete the drawing lines and switch on Word's formatting display (via the ¶ on the toolbar), you should be able to see the underlying structure. If you ensure there is a single tab per column (ie between formfields & other text) for the table and an single paragraph break per row, you should be able to use Word's Text-to-Table tool to convert it to a proper table for editing.

[czomberzdaniela]

Unfortunately, there aren't any tabs or any other separators underlying the structure of lines because data is contained within textfields. One textfield for each value. So i don't have neither rows nor separators. Any ideas ?

Thanks in advance for help.

Kind regards

[macropod]

Hi czomberzdaniela,

So what separates the text fields?

[czomberzdaniela]

Actually, i've realized that this strange table is made of some kind of frames. However, I still belive that there are no any separators and these frames are like manualy drawn and positioned

[macropod]

Hi czomberzdaniela,

You should be able to edit the contents of each of those frames individually.

It is possible to remove the frames but, without knowing where each one is anchored, there's no telling where the text would end up if you did this. Conversely, if you select the frame and delete the whole thing, you can do your editing in what looks like a table underneath.

[czomberzdaniela]

Dear macropod,

If fact, I can edit the content of each frame individually but I have a number of positions that need to be edited. So it will be extremely time-consuming, for example I have several tables where one or two culumns should be deleted or inserted so handling each row separately would a horror

Here are some pictures to give you a sense what kind of structure is this:

[macropod]

Hi czomberzdaniela,

I do sympathize, but about the best I can suggest in this case is to save the document as a PDF, then either:
• copy & paste from that back into Word. This will at least give you back the text laid out in a tabular format without the frames so that you can then turn it back into tables, or
• use a pdf-to-Word converter to turn the pdf's contents back into a structured Word document. The better ones can recreate true tables from what you've now got.

[czomberzdaniela]

You're right. I've just OCR'ed PDF and it's quite good. As you said, pro version can handle complicated tables correctly.

Thank You very much for Your help