Need some direction creating bulleted columns

[Ryan_B]

I am trying to create a business card where the user can select from a list of pre-populated bullet points, or enter their own. My first thought was to create side by side text frames and return this rule for each bullet point:

if(Field("Bullet1") != "")
{
   return "•" + '<p br="false" override="true" lindent="600" tabstops="0;600,Left"><z newsize="5.8"><font-family="Gotham HTF Book"<t>' + Field("Bullet1");
}
else
{
   return "";
}

Which returns:

 

It worked until I tested a longer entry on one of the Enter your own fields and it copyfitted, thus copyfitting half of the bullet points and not the other half. This is a business card with text frames above and below the bullet points, limiting my space to make the bullet text frames any bigger.

 

My next thought was to place my bullet point rules into one text frame. That way if one of the fields did need to copyfit, all of the bullet points would copyfit. So I drew one text frame and inserted my bullet point rules set up with tab stops. However, the tab stops didn't seem to want to take:

I tried to Right align as well and nothing changed.

 

My final thought was to take my first crack at creating a table. I combed the Tables & Charts threads and was able to create a table that housed my bullet points. I was pretty happy when I got it to work. That is until I made one of the fields wrap.

As you can see the first row of my table grew in height to accommodate for the wrapping text, thus creating a gap in-between my bullet points in my second column. I am very naive when it comes to tables and what all they can accomplish. Is there a way to not make the whole row grow and just the cell? Or am I going about this the wrong way all together? My brain hurts trying to get this to work, so any advice or direction would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[Dan Korn]

Create a text frame with two columns. Not a table, just a two-column frame. Or, two single-column frames linked together, which is basically the same thing.

[Ryan_B]

Thanks Dan for your response.

 

How do I dictate which fields go in which column? The User Guide doesn't exactly explain how to use them.

[Dan Korn]

Thanks Dan for your response.

 

How do I dictate which fields go in which column? The User Guide doesn't exactly explain how to use them.

Well, you don't, not really. It's just two columns of text. When a column fills up, the text flows to the next column. Or to the next frame.

 

That said, you can put this rule at the end of the text to balance the columns:

return '<page destination="topofcolumn" balance="true" />';

[Ryan_B]

Well that's pretty BA. Worked like a charm. Thanks Dan.