Introducing TableCleanerES

FrameMaker and Word have always had an awkward relationship to each other. Technical writers are often required to integrate Word content into their FrameMaker publications. They soon learn that there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between the programs’ features. TableCleaner was designed to help users format FrameMaker tables that were imported from Word. The original TableCleaner, released in 1999, focused on two tasks: removing custom ruling and shading from tables and converting body rows to heading rows.

Some tables originating in Word have custom ruling and shading applied to them and that prevents ruling and shading changes applied from the Table Designer from appearing. So TableCleaner gives you a quick way to remove custom ruling and shading from all of the tables in a document. (NOTE: Screenshots are from the latest version of TableCleaner.)

removeDialog

The second issue is heading rows; tables imported from Word do not have true FrameMaker header rows that repeat at the top of each new column and page. Manually converting the first row to a heading row is a multi-step process, so TableCleaner gives you a batch command for converting the first row in all of the tables in the document.

convertDialog

Over time, I added more goodies to TableCleaner that are useful regardless of where the tables originated from. One popular feature is the ability to resize multiple tables with a single command. This includes an option to resize “by example”; you resize a single table to your liking and then apply this sizing to a bunch of other tables with a single command.

resizeDialog

TableCleaner was originally written as a FrameMaker plugin, but I have recently rewritten it in ExtendScript. ExtendScript is Adobe’s implementation of JavaScript and it is built into FrameMaker 10 and higher. There are two significant new features: batch commands can now be applied to all of the documents in a book. And the interface can now be localized through a simple XML file. TableCleanerES is available now for only $39 US. Check out the full documentation, or purchase it now at my online store.

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