How do I join 2 tables

[stacynagyvary]

After splitting a table, I used to be able to unsplit it by deleting the
paragraph mark between the 2 tables. Now that I have upgraded to Word 2003,
I can't join the two tables back up again. When I try to delete the
paragraph that separates the two tables, it keeps it as two separate tables.
I would like it to be able to joing the two tables again.

 

[Jay Freedman]

After splitting a table, I used to be able to unsplit it by deleting the
paragraph mark between the 2 tables. Now that I have upgraded to Word 2003,
I can't join the two tables back up again. When I try to delete the
paragraph that separates the two tables, it keeps it as two separate tables.
I would like it to be able to joing the two tables again.

When you delete the paragraph, do the tables move together but appear
to have a heavier border between them, as if each is contributing a
separate border? And moving the edges of the columns in one doesn't
move them in the other?

It's possible that one of the tables has been changed to floating
(like a text box), which is easy to do accidentally. Put the cursor in
each table in turn, go to Table > Table Properties, and make sure the
text wrapping is set to None instead of Around.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

FWIW, I had an old document containing two tables with identical formatting
separated by some text. I deleted the text and could not get the tables to
join. Neither was floating; neither was nested. They were just very ordinary
(two-column, borderless) tables. I was on deadline and so just did what I
had to do to make the results work, but I'm still curious about what sort of
odd corruption was causing the problem. For some reason we're seeing a lot
more reports of that sort of thing in Word 2003.

 

[stacynagyvary]

Unfortunately, changing the text wrapping in Table Properties Cell did not
fix the problem. The only way I found to join the two tables again was to
highlight one table, then highlight the other table while holding the ctl
key. With both tables highlighted, I right clicked and selected Table
Reformat. This turned the two tables back into one table, but all the
formatting was lost. So I ended up fudging it, adding new rows to one of the
tables and then pasting the info from the other table into the new rows.
Either way, this is a lot more time consuming that it was in Word 2000.
Bummer. I would greatly appreciate any other suggestions. I use tables in
Word a lot and this is going to drive me crazy.

 

[Jay Freedman]

I suspect (and hope) that one of those two specific tables was
corrupted in some way, and this is not standard behavior for tables in
documents brought forward from previous versions. Has this happened to
other similar documents?