Normal style paragraph overrides custom table style paragraph

[Rishi]

Hi,

I am currently working with multiple Word 2003 documents that are owned
by several persons in my company. Each one worked on a chapter of a
book. We have created a table style based on Table Grid style and have
used that for all our tables (everyone is using a centrally located
template on the server). The style used in the documents for text is
Normal. All heading styles are based on Normal.

We have now decided to add more space after a paragraph for the text.
So I have modified the Normal style for that. However, now for the
tables as well there is more space after each line, which I do not
want. I have tried to find a way to remove this space but I haven't
been able to do so. There is no *no style* for table styles as for
normal text (*Based on* drop-down box). Table Grid is based on Table
Normal and I have tried to modify both but nothing works (can't modify
Table Normal).

I want to be able to revert my tables to the way they looked before i.e
remove the space introduced in the paragraph of the Normal style for my
custom table style. Can anyone help?

Rishi

 

[Peter Jamieson]

NB, you have posted in a Mac Word group here.

In theory I suppose you ought to be able to use the following VBA:

Sub SetTableNormalLineSpacing
ActiveDocument.Styles("Table Normal").ParagraphFormat.LineUnitBefore = 0
End Sub

However, that seems to set the Table Normal LineUnitBefore to be the same as
the Normal style, not to 0.

So you could get very close to what you want using

Sub SetTableNormalLineSpacing
ActiveDocument.Styles("Table Normal").ParagraphFormat.LineUnitBefore = 0.1
' (say)
End Sub

Personally, I avoid basing anything on Normal and always create a set of my
own base styles, based on "no style", and base everything I possibly can on
them. That limits the damage if some feature decides to use Normal or
something based on it.

Typically these style changes have no impact on the tables you already have
in your documents.

Peter Jamieson

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Rishi:

Now you've found out why we don't recommend Table Styles. They're a mess
for production work. The paragraph formatting for Table styles is inherited
from Normal style.

The difficulty you're running into is that everything is based on Normal
style. That's never a good move in a book, because you need to be able to
quarantine the effects of changes, exactly as you are asking.

Ideally, you would use Body Text style for the body text.

You would base Heading 1 style on "No Style" and base all the other heading
styles on the one above.

The "rule of thumb" is "Don't use Normal style for ANYTHING." Treat the
presence of Normal style as an indication that a piece of text is "yet to be
formatted". There are places where Normal style will appear and you can't
prevent that, because it's the default: the insides of pictures, the
paragraph formatting of table styles, the end-of-row markers on tables are
examples.

You would create three Paragraph styles for formatting tables: Table
Heading, Table Body, and Table Bullet.

However, now you have applied a table style you will find that it's
extremely difficult to change it, and you can't remove it.

You can, however, modify the Table Style, and add the Table Style to the
template, then Update Styles in all the other documents to flow the change
through. For example, you could modify the paragraph properties of the
heading and body rows of the table style you are using, to give yourself
more space above or below the text.

A Table Style is applied as a single "collection" of formatting: you either
have a table style applied to a table or you have a different table style
applied to the table. Once you have used a table style on a table, you
can't remove it and have "No Table Style".

Sorry: Table Styles are a mess. They're the exact opposite of what we
needed

Cheers

Hi,

I am currently working with multiple Word 2003 documents that are owned
by several persons in my company. Each one worked on a chapter of a
book. We have created a table style based on Table Grid style and have
used that for all our tables (everyone is using a centrally located
template on the server). The style used in the documents for text is
Normal. All heading styles are based on Normal.

We have now decided to add more space after a paragraph for the text.
So I have modified the Normal style for that. However, now for the
tables as well there is more space after each line, which I do not
want. I have tried to find a way to remove this space but I haven't
been able to do so. There is no *no style* for table styles as for
normal text (*Based on* drop-down box). Table Grid is based on Table
Normal and I have tried to modify both but nothing works (can't modify
Table Normal).

I want to be able to revert my tables to the way they looked before i.e
remove the space introduced in the paragraph of the Normal style for my
custom table style. Can anyone help?

Rishi

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Rishi]

Thanks Peter for the very helpful input!

Hi John, thanks for the help and advice as well!

Got your point on not using the Normal style as the base style. I will
use this advice for subsequent projects.

You can, however, modify theTableStyle, and add theTableStyleto the
template, then Update Styles in all the other documents to flow the change
through. For example, you could modify the paragraph properties of the
heading and body rows of thetablestyleyou are using, to give yourself
more space above or below the text.

Regarding the above, it's what I was actually trying to do. I have
tried changing the paragraph settings of the table style in the
template but the changes are not overriding the settings that I used
for the Normal style. So I am still left with the space problem in all
my tables. Any way to do that apart from coding (like Peter suggested)?

Now if I want to change all my text to Body Text (where I will base
Body Text on (no style)), so that Normal will not be used, how do I do
that? I have tried using *Select All Instances* of the Normal style and
then apply the Body Text style by clicking on it. But then, the tables
are selected as well. So now I have Body Text in my tables as well. Can
you suggest how I can replace the Normal style by the Body Style?

Regards,
Rishi

 

[Rishi]

Hello John,

The Find/Replace replaces the style for all text including those in the
tables as well. So this solution doesn't seem to work either. I think
that in my case it will be best to just go ahead with using code to
modify the paragraphing of Table Normal style in all docs that I am
using. If you do have any suggestions let me know.

Thanks a lot for all your help.

Regards,
Rishi

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Rishi:

Hmmm... That means the "style" applied to the table is Normal style and not
a table style. Damn! I think that's a bug.

Sorry, I didn't think to test this.

I have no particular suggestions: be careful with code that modifies styles,
it can corrupt the document. Test it on a single iteration to make sure
it's not throwing any errors before proceeding, or you risk breaking the
document style sheet.

Cheers

Hello John,

The Find/Replace replaces the style for all text including those in the
tables as well. So this solution doesn't seem to work either. I think
that in my case it will be best to just go ahead with using code to
modify the paragraphing of Table Normal style in all docs that I am
using. If you do have any suggestions let me know.

Thanks a lot for all your help.

Regards,
Rishi

Hi Rishi:

The second piece is simpler: If you use Find/Replace to replace the
Normalstylewith Body Textstyle, it should not find or change theTableStyled
tables.

You are quite correct:Tablestyles inherit the settings of the Normalstyle.
With proper styles, once you set a property in thestyle, you break
the inheritance to the basestyle. Withtablestyles, that's (one of
many...) bugs...

So the problem you have can't be solved while you have NormalStyle"in use"
as text in your document. Until you no longer need Normalstyleto have
different formatting in Tables from that which it has in the body text,
you're out of luck

Now you're starting to see WHY I don't usetablestyles

Cheers

Thanks Peter for the very helpful input!

Hi John, thanks for the help and advice as well!

Got your point on not using the Normalstyleas the basestyle. I will
use this advice for subsequent projects.

You can, however, modify theTableStyle, and add theTableStyleto the
template, then Update Styles in all the other documents to flow the change
through. For example, you could modify the paragraph properties of the
heading and body rows of thetablestyleyou are using, to give yourself
more space above or below the text.

Regarding the above, it's what I was actually trying to do. I have
tried changing the paragraph settings of thetablestylein the
template but the changes are not overriding the settings that I used
for the Normalstyle. So I am still left with the space problem in all
my tables. Any way to do that apart from coding (like Peter suggested)?

Now if I want to change all my text to Body Text (where I will base
Body Text on (nostyle)), so that Normal will not be used, how do I do
that? I have tried using *Select All Instances* of the Normalstyleand
then apply the Body Textstyleby clicking on it. But then, the tables
are selected as well. So now I have Body Text in my tables as well. Can
you suggest how I can replace the Normalstyleby the BodyStyle?

Regards,
Rishi

On Jan 23, 6:37 pm, "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]"
Hi Rishi:

Now you've found out why we don't recommendTableStyles. They're a mess
for production work. The paragraph formatting forTablestyles is inherited
from Normalstyle.

The difficulty you're running into is that everything is based on
Normalstyle. That's never a good move in a book, because you need to be
able
to
quarantine the effects of changes, exactly as you are asking.

Ideally, you would use Body Textstylefor the body text.

You would base Heading 1styleon "NoStyle" and base all the other heading
styles on the one above.

The "rule of thumb" is "Don't use Normalstylefor ANYTHING." Treat the
presence of Normalstyleas an indication that a piece of text is "yet to be
formatted". There are places where Normalstylewill appear and you can't
prevent that, because it's the default: the insides of pictures, the
paragraph formatting oftablestyles, the end-of-row markers on tables are
examples.

You would create three Paragraph styles for formatting tables:Table
Heading,TableBody, andTableBullet.

However, now you have applied atablestyleyou will find that it's
extremely difficult to change it, and you can't remove it.

You can, however, modify theTableStyle, and add theTableStyleto the
template, then Update Styles in all the other documents to flow the change
through. For example, you could modify the paragraph properties of the
heading and body rows of thetablestyleyou are using, to give yourself
more space above or below the text.

ATableStyleis applied as a single "collection" of formatting: you either
have atablestyleapplied to atableor you have a differenttablestyle
applied to thetable. Once you have used atablestyleon atable, you
can't remove it and have "NoTableStyle".

Sorry: TableStyles are a mess. They're the exact opposite of what we
needed

On 23/1/07 5:26 PM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "Rishi"

Hi,

I am currently working with multiple Word 2003 documents that are owned
by several persons in my company. Each one worked on a chapter of a
book. We have created atablestylebased onTableGridstyleand have
used that for all our tables (everyone is using a centrally located
template on the server). Thestyleused in the documents for text is
Normal. All heading styles are based on Normal.

We have now decided to add more space after a paragraph for the text.
So I have modified the Normalstylefor that. However, now for the
tables as well there is more space after each line, which I do not
want. I have tried to find a way to remove this space but I haven't
been able to do so. There is no *nostyle* fortablestyles as for
normal text (*Based on* drop-down box).TableGrid is based onTable
Normal and I have tried to modify both but nothing works (can't modify
TableNormal).

I want to be able to revert my tables to the way they looked before i.e
remove the space introduced in the paragraph of the Normalstylefor my
customtablestyle. Can anyone help?

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410