Both creating and copy/pasting tables in Canvas (the rich text editor boxes) seems problematic and difficult. The table structure is lost and only text copies into Canvas from MS Word and Excel when using the Firefox browser. When using chrome, one can see that the table copied into the rich text editor, however, when saved, the table properties, such as borders are not visible. When creating tables from scratch, the formatting options are difficult to understand and limited in scope. For instance, I cannot figure out how to insert shading into the top row of cells only. When I tried to shade them, the entire table became shaded. While there are limited examples of formatting in the instructors' manual, they do not fully explain the process. For instance, yes, you can insert "5" for borders, but what will that look like in my table - is that very thick or very thin? (Rhetorical question) To format a table I just created, I went into the HTML code of a Blackboard table and copied it. That is not the way I want to go about this. Lastly, while I have some HTML knowledge, most of our instructors and students do not, so wouldn't have a clue where to begin with this. I hope to see this feature become more intuitive and user friendly.
Any suggestions from power users out there for workarounds? I see that this has been a topic in the past, but evidently without changes to the software? I'm curious if it's not a big deal for others? I typically use tables quite a bit in my courses.
Regards,
Julia Phillips
Who rated this idea