Not overly versed in more than the basic uses of Writer or word. When working with tables how do I prevent rows on one side of a column aligning with rows another side? I know it can be done since creating new cells allows me to do this, however, if two separated rows ever align I am no longer able to manipulate one row without manipulating another.
I am trying to make it so that the rows in column one will not be affected by adjusting the height of the rows in column two. Thank you.
Quite cryptic! Please edit your question to explain the intended result with screenshot(s) of present formatting and complaint about such or such mishap. For best help, use View>Formatting Marks before taking screenshot.
Is this slightly clearer? I’m sorry, I am uncertain of the terminology I should be using.
Semantically speaking, a table is meant for intrinsically tabular data, i.e.columns contain related data, which can be clarified with a column title; the same holds for rows. This remark calls for equally sized rows and columns.
For a reference on this, read the comments in the HTML 5 standard on the W3C site.
In some circumstances, the same data may apply to a set of contiguous cells in a row or column. To avoid repetition, the cells can be merged to form a single cell spanning rows/columns. The bounds of the merged cells align with non merged table canvas lines.
Your case looks a bit different. It seems you want 2 independent columns. This questions the “intrinsically tabular data” property. There are 2 solutions:
abusing the merge feature
You define more rows then necessary and you merge cells in each columns to fit your layout.
Needless to say, this becomes quickly impractical and is a maintenance nightmare.
using two parallel tables
Unfortunately, Writer doesn’t allow to insert 2 tables in the same line. Provided your “table” is shorter the one page, you work around this limitations with frames (but stumble on the frame anchor traditional difficulty). I’d recommend to insert two consecutive As Character-anchored frames with auto-size property to begin.
Your tables are then constructed independently inside each frame.
To give the illusion of a single table, you must reduce the padding/spacing around each table and frame to zero. You must also decide if the outer borders should be borne by the tables or frames.
The difficulty here, compared to the first solution, is to position the tables relative to each other and also to keep the frames quite in sync (you would probably switch to fixed-size frames after your first trials).
In my opinion, both solutions are “ugly”. I’d advocate you to think over your data and ponder if they really fit in the table paradigm. Maybe more details on what you want to exhibit in this layout would help for better advice. Comments are welcome
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As mentioned in Shortcut Keys for LibreOffice Writer, Alt+Ctrl[+Shift]+Arrow Keys are meant to do what you want after “two separated rows ever align”. But I have tested, and at least for 6.1.4.2, the combinations with Up/Down arrow keys seem to not work. Possibly worth filing a bug report.
