Skip to main content

Avoid empty rows and columns in a document table

  • Updated

BRYTER provides more than one way to present data in automatically generated documents:

  • for tabular data (e.g. a list of employees, each with name and position), add a table to a Microsoft Word document template and configure it to be automatically populated with data from a collection; or
  • for non-tabular data in variables, you can create tables and configure them manually.

Manually creating tables is prone to formatting issues such as empty rows or columns where data is missing (most often because a user has skipped a response). The delete row {{\dr}} and delete column {{\dc}} commands are the tools that will help you avoid this situation.

Variables in tables

When preparing your template and equipping it with placeholders, you also can put your placeholders in a table:

Table equipped with placeholders, template to self-service document

This image illustrates the transition from template to generated document. The placeholders in the template will be replaced by text generated in response to user answers.

Empty rows

In some cases, you may have empty variables in certain rows (or columns) of your table. For example, "CEO_label" and "CEO_name" might be optional and the end user might decide to skip. In this case, you would end up with a table with an empty row:

Table with an empty row after optional content skipped

Delete empty row tag {{\dr}}

Add the tag {{\dr}} after a placeholder in a table to delete the row in the table IF ALL variables in the row are empty.

In this example, the {{\dr}} command is added after each placeholder in the table. Where a user skips both variables in a row, and both variables are consequently empty, the row is deleted from the table.

Table wit empty row deleted using {{\dr}} command

Delete empty column tag {{\dc}}

You can delete a column in those cases where all variables in the column are empty. Add the tag {{\dc}} to the relevant placeholder in the column. If all variables related to those placeholders are empty, the whole column will be deleted.

For example, assume that in the above table end users optionally can provide a source of their information (column 3 in image below). If no source is provided for any entry (i.e. the variables replacing {{company name source}}, {{CEO name source}} and {{revenue source}} all are empty), then the column would be automatically deleted.

Table with empty column deleted using {{\dc}} command

Tags:

Related articles