How to Preserve Line Breaks in Table Cells when Importing from Excel

[PD_10728150]

We have tables drafted in Excel 2016 that have line breaks within cells. When we paste these tables into Arbortext Editor (v8.1.1) the breaks are not retained. Is it possible to preserve line breaks when pasting a table from Excel? Thanks in advance.

[bfriesen]

Can you upload a sample excel file?

Bryon

[PD_10728150]

Please see attached. Thank you.

[bfriesen]

This is what you are expecting it to look like in editor?

Bryon

[PD_10728150]

No. 

The "Problem" and "Troubleshooting" columns have line breaks between sentences in Excel.

As seen in your screenshot, they are not being preserved once pasted in AT.

I'm wondering if this is even possible.

[bfriesen · Accepted solution]

Now I see what you mean. When we started with editor we were warned that the table functionality was limited. I expect the only options are that you need to wrap them in elements in order to get the required output. The problem column has a new line processing instruction that looks like it is not being obeyed and the trouble shooting column has the text wrapped in two separate p elements.

Bryon

[PD_10728150]

so the DTD we use does not allow for p elements in table cells. it doesn't however support a brk tag but in order to display as you'd expect a new paragraph to in the PDF we would need to mark it up as:

<brk>&nbsp;<brk>

this is not scalable as we have over a hundred of these instances in just one document so i think i'll have to write a script that replaces all new lines in tables with the markup above. since adding markup to it is what we'll have to do i''ve marked your answer as the solution.

i appreciate your time. 

thanks, Bryon!