I use a lot of tables in Scrivener because it allows me to keep everything nice and tidy. However, more and for often I find myself annoyed by the fact that if I need one cell I have no choice but to add an entire row and then more everything around to make it look proper again.
Which is why an I would like to suggest adding the possibility, when right-clicking, of adding a single cell above or below. I know this is an option in Excell but I really donāt want to use that, so I hope it might be added to Scrivener. It would me much appreciated!!
Iām having a hard time visualising this one, could you perhaps post a before/after screenshot of what youāre looking for? The way they work currently is that the table has a set number of columns and rows. If you add a column it will have as many rows as currently exist, and if you add a row it will have as many columns as currently exists for the table. A new row with more or less columns would go against expected behaviour as far as Iāve seen.
I am having the same problem. I canāt get it to split cells - and I canāt select two cells above each other without selecting entire rows, so I canāt just add rows and then merge the cells I didnāt want split! The āsplit cellsā option is there in the tables formatting pane, why doesnāt it actually work? Is there some trick Iām missing here?
In general, I find tables to be Scrivenerās major weak spot. Was this functionality pulled directly from OSX TextEdit? Because it seems to have exactly the same problems. I use a ton of tables in my academic writing, often with complicated formats that require splitting and merging cells, and itās really annoying to have to open up Word or Excel every time I want to make one. (And half the time pasting those back into scrivener just results in an absolute mess.) I would be SO happy if the next version has better table functionality!
Yes, the Mac version uses the standard OS X text system, so itās tables are the same as those in TextEdit. They are far from perfect, but the problem is that, as a one man operation (we are a team, but Iām the sole Mac programmer), we donāt have the resources really to completely replace those tables with something else. Itās not just replacing them in the UI - if I replace them with something else (a hugely complex task in itself), I would also need to rewrite all the importers and exporters to deal with the custom tables code. And given that our core format - RTF - uses OS Xās standard importers, this suddenly turns into not just replacing tables but writing our own RTF importers and exporters from scratch, too.
We would definitely like to improve the tables in the future, but for now itās just out of scope, Iām afraid, and they will definitely be staying the same for the next major update. Iād really like to be able to get another programmer on board at some point, but there arenāt many out there who are available and would be able to do this anyway. (I could do it myself but it would take several months on this feature alone, while everything else fell by the wayside, which is why I havenāt been able to address it.)
Keith - Thank you for your comments on improving the use of tables in Scrivener. I just discovered Scrivener and find it very useful in organizing my thoughts on writing nonfiction (e.g. scientific writing). Tables are ubiquitous in scientific writing and I hope the popularity (and sales!) of Scrivener progress to the point where you can hire another programmer to improve the handling of tables. But in the meantime, I love being able to organize my thoughts using Scrivenerās features.
