Setting general table display options

There are many ways that you can make the table and attribute information easier to work with. You can customize the look and style of the table by changing the font, color, and size of fields, records, and values. You can also use characters to indicate indexed fields, display domain and subtype descriptions, and set field properties on the Layer Properties dialog box that are honored by the table.

Steps:

1. To access the default settings for all tables, click the Customize menu, click ArcMap Options, then click the Tables tab.

   Settings applied to the ArcMap Options dialog box accessed from the Customize menu will apply to all tables you work with in all ArcGIS Desktop applications. Changing this setting here changes it for all the applications. Changing this setting here applies to new table windows you open, not to table windows you have already opened.

   For an individual table, click Table Options on the Table window toolbar and click Appearance.

2. To set the text font and size, click the Table Font arrow and click the font you want to use. Click the Table Font Size arrow and click a point size.
3. To set the column header height at the top of the table and the height of rows in the table, type values for the percentage of font size.

   You should normally leave the default column header height at 125% and the default cell height at 115%.

   If the height you specify for Cell Height provides enough space in a cell to accommodate additional lines, the content of the cell wraps if it exceeds the current width of the column. This is particularly useful if your table contains long text fields, such as description or comment fields. Increasing the height of the cells in your table makes these fields easy to read.

4. To set the character used when indicating whether a column has an index associated with it, type the character. Uncheck Mark indexed fields with if you prefer not to see which columns are indexed.
5. To set subtype and domain options, check Display coded value domain and subtype descriptions and check the check box to validate records automatically.

   The coded value domain and subtype descriptions are for display purposes only. When working with the data, such as calculating, querying, or finding values, make sure to use the actual values. This setting only applies to data from geodatabases where domains and subtypes have been defined. This and the automatic validation settings don't apply to the Attributes window, which is opened from the Attributes button on the Editor toolbar.

6. Click OK.

   A new layer is added to the map.