I can't insert a table from Table menu

[Rachel]

Under the Table menu, when I select Insert the drop down menu options do not
appear and there is no way for me to insert a table into my document. Any
help?
I've closed and reopened Word already.

 

[Jay Freedman]

First attempt:
- Open the Tools > Customize dialog.
- Right-click the Table menu and select Reset from the popup menu.
- Close the Customize dialog.
- Test the menu.

Second attempt, if the first doesn't work:
- Close Word.
- In "My Computer", choose Tools > Folder Options > View.
- Click the "Show hidden files and folders" option.
- Close the dialog.
- Go to the folder C:\Documents and Settings\<your name>\Application
Data\Microsoft\Templates.
- Rename the file Normal.dot to OldNormal.dot.
- Start Word.
- Test the menu.
- If you had customizations (styles, AutoText entries, customized
toolbars, or macros) stored in the OldNormal.dot template, use the
Organizer (in Tools > Templates & Add-Ins) to copy them to Normal.dot.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Rachel]

I can see the Tables menu but when I select Insert the menu that should
appear next to the arrow symbol does not appear, therefore, I can't insert a
Table.

If I open Word and then open the document up under the File menu, it does
work. However, if I open up the file directly (not via the Word program) the
menu still fails to appear. Any other advice?

 

[Jay Freedman]

The fact that it works when opening a document from inside Word but
not when using My Computer (I assume that's what you mean by
"directly") suggests a problem in the mechanism that transfers the
document's information from the icon to Word.

Try opening Start > Run and typing this line, then clicking OK:

winword.exe /r

(notice the space between the exe and the slash). You won't see any
action, but Word will rewrite its registry entries and then quit. Then
try opening a document from an icon.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Rachel]

No luck. The items under the Table menu cannot be selected for any word
files that were not created on my computer. FYI, I have Word 2003
(11.6568.6568). The other files were most likely created in an older
version. Is there a way to update these files to my version when I open them?

 

[Jay Freedman]

The file formats for Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003 are all the same;
there isn't any "upgrading" to do.

I've never heard of a *document* that could change what appeared in
Word's menus. Possibly it could happen if the "documents" were really
*templates* containing menu customizations. That's pretty far-fetched,
though.

I'm now officially out of ideas.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[V]

Hi,

We have this problem also. I was wondering if the Adobe Acrobat 7 and an
electronic document record management software called Objective is installed
in your PC.

 

[Rachel]

Yes, I have Adobe Acrobat 7 installed on my computer, but not Objective.

 

[V]

Hi Rachel,
I might have the fix for you. Please try the following.
Remove the Adobe Add in from Office.

1. Go to control panel.
2. Double click Add or Remove Programs
3. Click Adobe Acrobat Pro 7 from Currently installed Programs.
4. Click Change.
5. Click Modify and then click Next.
6. Expand Create Adobe PDF
7. Expand Acrobat PDFMaker
8. Click the arrow next to Microsoft Office and then click Not Installed.
9. In the Adobe Pro setup wizard click OK
10. Close the Add or Remove programs and test it.

Regards,
V

 

[Rex]

I have encountered same problem reported by Rachel (and others). While I have
not tried the solutions offered in this thread, I did discover the trigger
event that caused the flyout menus to disappear.

In my case, if I opened an email which caused the 'Word will open as your
email editor' dialog (can't quite remember the exact wording) to pop up, then
the flyout menus would disappear until I closed Word and Outlook. This was a
repeatable sequence not related to any particular document (even happened
with a blank new document). Would happen if Word was already open with Table
menu flyouts visible/functioning correctly, but as soon as Outlook did its
thing, then good-bye flyouts.

I have Acrobat Pro 6, so will try fix below. However, for whatever reason, I
think the Outlook connection is the more likely culprit.

Cheers
Rex