Need Help Posting Tables

[haha]

Can anyone remind me how to paste tabular data into a post? When I copy a table, it gets scrambled when it posts to the forum.

I am struggling with understanding something on the Treasury Direct site that relates to the inflation adjustments made to TIPS.

If I could post it you guys could maybe help me figure it out.

Ha

 

[REWahoo]

Ha, I never mastered posting tabular data. Can you post it as a screen shot?

 

[Midpack]

Ha, I never mastered posting tabular data. Can you post it as a screen shot?

It's a minor PITA, but that's what I've resorted to in the past...

 

[TromboneAl]

Yes, screenshot. Life is too short to spend it trying to get the columns to line up.

 

[ERD50]

UPDATE to old thread...

OK, I just got trapped by this again. What I usually do in a text editor is to choose a "mono-spaced" font, Monoco, or Courier.

It ALMOST works on this forum. But it appears that spaces are not looked at as mono-spaced characters, which is just not right.

EX 1 FONT= VERANDA

GNMA/VFIIX 0.5 4.80% 1,000,000 24,000
SPY 0.5 3.70% 1,000,000 18,500
------
42,500

Now, that was copied from my text editor in Courier New Font, and it looks good there.

So, now try again with Courier New in the forum menu:

GNMA/VFIIX 0.5 4.80% 1,000,000 24,000
SPY 0.5 3.70% 1,000,000 18,500
------
42,500

OK, that actually aligns well in my window, but when I preview it... it looks like the extra spaces get removed. When I copy back to my text editor, the spaces are gone.

But, if I replace every sequential space with a char...

GNMA/VFIIX - 0.5 -- 4.80% -- 1,000,000 -- 24,000
SPY -------- 0.5 -- 3.70% -- 1,000,000 -- 18,500
----------------------------------------- ------
----------------------------------------- 42,500

It works.

Admins - can something be done?

This is a pain for people trying to post data, a very common occurrence here. And it would be a piece of cake if we just chose Courier New.

TIA - ERD50

Looks like this in my text editor:

 

[W2R]

Until a more elegant solution arrives, there is this:

index ...........year ...........month
8.875 ..........1989 ..........January
9.000 ..........1989 ..........February
9.000 ..........1989 ..........March
9.125 ..........1989 ..........April
9.250 ..........1989 ..........May
9.250 ..........1989 ..........June
9.125 ..........1989 ..........July
8.750 ..........1989 ..........August
8.375 ..........1989 ..........September
8.125 ..........1989 ..........October
8.125 ..........1989 ..........November
8.125 ..........1989 ..........December

which was done by copy/pasting five white periods ..... where larger spaces were desired. PITA ..... but it's something.

 

[ERD50]

OK, that was pretty clever to turn them white. Better visually.

It works if you want to pretty it up a bit from just periods or dashes or something, but it's extra work and I'm just so lazy!

So, I'll pad with something if it doesn't get fixed, but it just seems odd that the forum SW pulls out sequential spaces. That must be an extra something they are doing, and it seems we'd be better off if it didn't go to all that 'trouble".

I'm just wondering if that is a config setting somewhere that can be disabled?

But until then, I'll pad away, and maybe use white if I want it to look extra special nice. Thanks!


-ERD50

 

[W2R]

You're welcome! Hope it helps a little bit, anyway. Don't forget you can use the shortcuts Control-C to copy, and Control-V to paste. Then you can copy once and zip through the table pasting repeatedly (bing bing bing) and it is way faster. Sorry this is the best I could figure out right now! Hopefully the admins will come up with something more elegant.

 

[HFWR]

Piece of cake...

Make a table in a spreadsheet, copy/paste it into paint or some such, then save it as a jpg...

 

[ERD50]

Thanks, that works too, I ended up doing that as an example. It's just a few extra steps. I guess I'm just surprised that a simple copy/paste messes with the spaces like it does.

Not one of life's greatest problems, just a minor annoyance.


-ERD50

Piece of cake...

Make a table in a spreadsheet, copy/paste it into paint or some such, then save it as a jpg...

 

[HFWR]

Boy, do I miss being down "only" 6%, per the illustrative chart (originally posted last summer)...

 

[clifp]

Dear Andy, Admins

I am also frustrated by the lack of tables.

Many other Bulletin Board system (include other VBB systems) support the HTML tag
[PRE] [/PRE] which tells the browser not to format the information between tags.

Any chance this can be added to the forums?

 

[REWahoo]

Janet H is doing some research to find a plug-in table editor for vBulletin.

 

[REWahoo]

Clifp, in case you missed it, Janet H found a tool to help with tables: http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f32/add-a-table-to-your-post-new-tool-43750.html

 

[Midpack]

J	u	s	t
T	e	s	t
	i	n	g
C	o	o	l

 

[freebird5825]

Fourscore
and
seven
years
ago

Practice

makes

perfect

all better

Thank you, Janet and Team Moderators

 

[ERD50]

Clifp, in case you missed it, Janet H found a tool to help with tables: http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f32/add-a-table-to-your-post-new-tool-43750.html

It's nice to have another tool, and I appreciate the effort to add it, but unfortunately, this really doesn't address the original issue.

It seems so simple that if I post something with spaces in it and use a mono-spaced font, that the forum software shouldn't take it upon itself to remove those spaces.


test w/Courier new:

5 chars_ follow this>_____<those were 5 char_
5 spaces follow this> <those were 5 spaces
01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789

See? It removes five spaces and replaces them with one space.

Hmmm, will THIS work?:

test the ...CODE.... tags:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/misc.php?do=bbcode#code

5 spaces follow this>     <those were 5 spaces
01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789

next test from their example:

        <script type="text/javascript">
        <!--
            alert("Hello world!");
        //-->
        </script>

Did that work?

OK, after a PREVIEW, that seems to do it

looks like "CODE" tags are the answer!

-ERD50

from the bulletin site: The [code] tag switches to a fixed-width (monospace) font and preserves all spacing. I needed to put _noparse_ tags in there so it would display the tag

 

[clifp]

Thanks Janet that will come in handy. It is isn't the perfect solution for cut and pasting data from another source, but a still a big improvement.

 

[ERD50]

It is isn't the perfect solution for cut and pasting data from another source, but a still a big improvement.

No, but the *CODE* tags will help with cut paste

GNMA/VFIIX - 0.5 -- 4.80% -- 1,000,000 -- 24,000
SPY -------- 0.5 -- 3.70% -- 1,000,000 -- 18,500
----------------------------------------- ------
----------------------------------------- 42,500

GNMA/VFIIX   0.5    4.80%    1,000,000    24,000
SPY          0.5    3.70%    1,000,000    18,500
                                          ------      
                                          42,500

-ERD50

 

[clifp]

ERD I played with the code tag. It is almost perfect for cut and paste tables.

Thanks a bunch.