Lemon Fool Table Formatter
The Lemon Fool website allows three different methods of inserting tabular data into a post.... using [code][/code], [table][/table] or [pre][/pre] tags.
Code tags create a window with a vertical scroll bar but text which wraps horizontally if it is too wide:
Code tags create a window with a vertical scroll bar but text which wraps horizontally if it is too wide:
Table tags create a view with no scroll bars and with text wrapping within each column:
Pre tags create a view with a horizontal scroll bar:
This web page allows data to be copied and pasted from a spreadsheet, and structures the data in a format that can be copied and pasted into a Lemon Fool post.
Detailed instructions are available at the bottom of this page.
Select the style of tag you want to use:
Input Text:
Output Text:
Input Text:
Output Text:
User Guide
Itsallaguess has created a great video to demonstrate how to use this tool: vimeo.com/321327901
The step-by-step process is:
Notes:
The step-by-step process is:
- Using the three radio buttons, select what type of tabular data you wish to create
- Paste data from your spreadsheet into the Input Text box
- For [code] and [pre] tags, determine how you want to separate columns in the formatted output. As a default, columns are separated by " | " (space followed by a vertical bar followed by a space)
- Click on the "Create Formatted Text" button
- Copy the text in the Output Text box (click within the Output Text box, CTRL-A to select all the text then CTRL-C to copy to the clipboard) and paste it into a LemonFool post
- If you want to repeat the exercise, click on the "Clear Text Boxes" button and this will remove all text in the Input Text and Output Text boxes
Notes:
- Data can be copied and pasted directly from an Excel, OpenOffice or LibreOffice spreadsheet.
Note that any cells which contain a linefeed (maybe to create a two-line header) will cause incorrect formatting of the rows containing those cells.
In this case it is better to have the headers in the spreadsheet over two rows - Tab-delimited data can also be copied and pasted from a word-processor such as Microsoft Word, or from a plain-text editor such as Notepad
- If you wish to type data directly into the Input Text box, note that hitting the TAB key will not create a tab character (this is an inherent feature of web pages). With a Windows OS, a tab character can be created by holding down the ALT key, typing 09 on the numeric keypad, then releasing the ALT key
- For [code] and [pre] tables, formatted output makes each column the width of the widest element in the column. Numeric data is right-justified and non-numeric data is left-justified. For [table] tables, there is no control over the width of the columns.
- For [code] and [pre] tables, to prevent the rightmost character in one column being next to the leftmost character of the next column, a column separator is automatically inserted. The default separator is " | " (space followed by a vertical bar followed by a space).This default can be changed by typing your preferred separator in the Output Text Column Separator field. A single space might be preferred to reduce the width of very wide tables.
- Tables are often very wide due to the width of each column header. This can be text-wrapped in Excel to reduce the problem but will be full-width with this tool. If column headers are very long, it might be worth splitting the headers into two rows in Excel before copying into this tool.
- The output text is preceded by tags [code] or [table] or [pre] and followed by [/code] or [/table] or [/pre]. These tags should be included when copying a pasting to a LemonFool post.
- When creating the Lemon Fool post, you may included normal text before the opening tag or after the closing tag. Do not insert text between the two tags.
- The "Clear Text Boxes" button only clears the text boxes, it does not change the value of the Column Separator
- If you want to practice, use the LemonFool test board: www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=28