Arbortext AAD S1000D cut and paste of tables from Excel

[GregoryMackenzi]

Arbortext Editor 5.3

Logged into the AAD S1000D CSDB

Problem:

I noticed that when I cut and "Paste Excel" my table appears in my S1000D document but the cells are empty. The reason for this is that not all of the markup is supplied during the "Paste Excel" function. Since the content is not valid it does not appear. The content of each cell is not wrapped with <para> tags.

Workaround:

1. Turn off Context Rules, Menu: Tools/Context Rules to uncheck Context Checking temporarily, you will receive a warning.

Now because Context Rules are off you can paste anything you want into the document at any positon. Choose a valid location you know that will accept your table markup when you validate later.

2. Menu: Edit\Paste Excel, check or uncheck the boxes you need, and select how many rows are title rows, click OK.

The content of the entire table will be pasted into the S1000D document. You should see all of the content for each of the cells. Because Context Rules are turned off the document is invalid. The easiest way to insert markup is to select the content of the rows for the table, and Menu: Insert Markup, choose "para" from the Insert Markup window list.

Note that you get the entire list of markup so you will have to search through it and knowing what markup is valid at the point of selection is important. You may wish to enter note markup for example around some of your text.

3. With the markup applied to the table you may click the green arrow to validate the document, or choose Menu: Tools/Context Rules  to check and turn on Context Rules. If you have made an error somewhere it will be flagged, i.e. you will receive a warning and be prompted to fix it.

Tip - It is important to make sure that your xml is valid and Context Rules are on before further editing of your document.

Tip - With regard to the above process most of the time I simply apply para markup to the table and that is sufficient for most of my needs. With Context Rules back on and a valid document I then edit the table further to modify the markup or apply emphasis and other markup.