Odd behavior when using click-and-type text

[Doc Overkill]

Gang,
I'm having a lot of problems with one Word document.

The document has several small tables in it, very simple tables, two
rows, and some formatted text in each cell (formatting being
centering, bold, and some auto-numbered lists).

This doc was fine until I started adding a bit of text to the right of
each table, using click-and-type. What usually happens is that this
bit of text will appear in duplicate further down the page, at the
left margin,and when I type anywhere near or in the original
click-n-type text, it will show a duplicate cursor doing the duplicate
typing down below. Sometimes I can scroll off the page and scroll
back and the duplicate will disappear, but usually not.

Sometimes the app "unexpectedly quits" and I lose my changes since
last save.

I thought something might have been corrupted in the doc, so I copied
a couple of the tables without the click-n-type bits into a new
document, added the click-n-type text anew, and same problems.

The click-and-type text seems to be causing major problems. I have
had no other consistent problems with Word lately.

My system is a G4/733, OS 10.3.1, Word 10.1.4, over 600MB RAM.

Much thanks for any hints as to how to get this stuff to behave

_dennis

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Doc,

All I can tell you is that click-and-type is notorious for causing problems
and should never be used (in fact, it should be removed from Word
altogether). Also, tables can be fussy and I imagine the combination of the
two is deadly, as you've discovered.

I suggest you do without the click-and-type text bits and use text boxes
instead.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[Doc Overkill]

Thanks, Beth. At least now I know it's not a problem unique to my computer

_dennis

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

This responds to microsoft.public.mac.office.word on 30 Dec 2003 11:40:44
-0800, (e-mail address removed) (Doc Overkill):

Thanks, Beth. At least now I know it's not a problem unique to my computer

Just to amplify what Beth said: A "Table" in Word is a special case of
"paragraph" (it's a paragraph with multiple subparagraphs, one for each
cell).

In Word, you cannot have anything to the right of the paragraph terminator
on any line. And in a table, you cannot insert anything between the last
column and the end-of-row marker.

So you cannot use Click-n-Type besides or near tables.

Instead:
* create a text box to contain your table, and another to contain the text
you want to the right of it, or

* use a pair of Frames to do the same thing, or

* use tabs and paragraph borders to emulate a table, or

* use a floating table and a text box, or

* use section breaks to create a multi-column layout.

I would use the last approach.

Normally you should turn Click-n-Type off, or use it only for "throw-away"
documents: those you create, print, and delete immediately. Click-n-Type
makes such a horrible mess in a document that it is really not practical to
use it in a document that will be edited later. It's one of a collection of
features that come under the heading of "eye-candy" put there for people who
have no interest in learning to use a word-processor. WordPerfect has it so
we had to have it: but it's an abomination to those of us who create
professional documents

Hope this helps