Family Historian User Group

When data is copied from a website page and pasted into an editable text box in FH, the data is formatted as a table, with default values given to the column widths. Depending on the data, this can result in columns having lots of 'wasted' width, and in cells having wrapped display lines.

I laboriously re-size each column to create a compact table with little wasted space and no multi-line cells, and I also delete any unused columns.

The table's Popup menu has a lot of useful options to insert, delete and re-arrange the rows and columns, but it would be very useful (and time-saving) to have an extra option to perform this re-sizing automatically ...
suggestion: Popup>Modify Table>Auto-size Columns

Not so much auto-size but auto-shrink....

The term used in Excel is AutoFit.

'Auto-shrink' not appropriate when a narrow column has forced auto-wrap to give two rows of text in one cell.
I envisage similar to LibreOffice's 'Column>Optimal Width' applied to all columns.

mcinfhug wrote: ↑

31 Jan 2022 15:48

'Auto-shrink' not appropriate when a narrow column has forced auto-wrap to give two rows of text in one cell.
I envisage similar to LibreOffice's 'Column>Optimal Width' applied to all columns.

Actually I was thinking of exactly that scenario - two or more lines of text in one cell. I tend not to mind that if I get a compact set of columns elsewhere, resulting in a compact table that's narrower than the "page".

I guess my preference is for a narrow table with one (say) multiple line column, compared to a wider table, with that one column putting all the text on one line.

I guess providing one could easily transition from the wide (with single lines) to the compact (with two lines of text), I wouldn't have a problem. Too often though, what appears to happen is that I narrow column 1 and instead of keeping the same width for the other columns, moving them in, what happens is the extra width is given to column 2 only, leaving columns 3 onwards the same width and in the same place.

What I am pasting from websites mostly fits in with single height rows, so a one-step auto-size of all columns suits me.

Once all the columns are 'normalized' one can readily then narrow particularly wide columns to give two+ rows of text, having made use of the auto procedure for all the other columns.

It's quite annoying to have to drag each column width, especially if you mis-judge the padding space and the column word-wraps. In some circumstances it's best to initially increase the total table width, before working through the columns from left to right.

Or, of course, don't use the auto-size columns procedure for a particular table !