Printing tables in Word 2004

[keeweeset]

I am trying to print several pages of tables but every time I'm in the print menu Word freezes up on me. I don't understand why...
I've printed the document only a few days ago and then everything was fine. After adding a few things it has gone crazy...

Could it be that the document is too big to print?

Sometimes the different cells end up on top of each other... I put in some manual page breaks, I'm not sure maybe that is the problem.

I do hope that I am explaining this well...

Thanks

 

[John McGhie]

This is a well-known "weakness" in Word 2004/X.

Tables can corrupt, particularly if they are large.

When they do, you can attempt to split the table.

1) Make a copy of the document.

2) Click in a cell at the beginning of a row about two pages down the
table.

3) Go to the Table menu and click the item "Split Table"

Do that about every two to five pages. It might fix it.

If not:

1) Select the entire table

2) Go to the Table menu and choose Convert>Table to Text

3) Choose to separate with "Tabs" and OK

DO NOT MOVE THE SELECTION

4) Go to the Table menu again, and choose Convert>Text to Table...

This re-builds the table, removing the corruption. Save the document, it
will be fine after that. Of course, you may have more than one corrupt
table!

Note that "Tables" are quite a challenge to Word, your computer, and your
Printer. If any of these is suffering from lack of memory or lack of CPU
power, printing big tables is going to be a problem. Try stopping
(Quitting) all other applications before you attempt to print the table.

All going well, Word 2004 will print a document containing about 500 pages
of tables without too much of a problem. But a single table 500 pages long
is probably asking too much.

Hope this helps

I am trying to print several pages of tables but every time I'm in the print
menu Word freezes up on me. I don't understand why...
I've printed the document only a few days ago and then everything was fine.
After adding a few things it has gone crazy...

Could it be that the document is too big to print?

Sometimes the different cells end up on top of each other... I put in some
manual page breaks, I'm not sure maybe that is the problem.

I do hope that I am explaining this well...

Thanks

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Michael Kulyk]

Did Word 2008 for Mac fix this problem/weakness? - thanks in advance

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

..docx (the new file format, native to Word 2008) is supposed to be more
reliable, so it might be that large tables in .docx files are less
likely to corrupt. I wouldn't expect a change in .doc files just from
using Word 2008.

 

[Michael Kulyk]

The reason I asked about Mac Word 2004 vs. 2008 is that I tried printing a file with a table in it from Word 2004 and (G5 iMac 1 GB RAM 10.4.11 & 2Ghz Core2Duo Macbook 2 GB RAM 10.5.2) and both froze when trying to print that file. However, both Macs printed the file from Word 2008.

again, thanks in advance for replies/comments

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Michael:

The act of converting a .doc to a .dotx will remove many of the sources of
corruption in a bad table.

If you open a .doc in Word 2008, it converts it into its native format while
you are editing/viewing/printing it.

Word 2008 does have higher limits and a bit more in reserve when you start
playing with "difficult" documents. However, you will find that there are
some documents that will break 2008 but not 2004, and vice-versa.

I would keep both around. For that particular document, it might be worth
saving it as .dotx, then closing, re-opening, and re-saving as .doc. It
might fix it.

Even better would be to convert it to .docx and leave it that way. If you
have the converters loaded, Word 2004 will be able to read-and-write .dotx,
and the .dotx file format is quite a bit more rugged.

Hope this helps

The reason I asked about Mac Word 2004 vs. 2008 is that I tried printing a
file with a table in it from Word 2004 and (G5 iMac 1 GB RAM 10.4.11 & 2Ghz
Core2Duo Macbook 2 GB RAM 10.5.2) and both froze when trying to print that
file. However, both Macs printed the file from Word 2008.

again, thanks in advance for replies/comments

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Michael Kulyk]

Thank you Dalya and John for your comments and suggestions. They were illuminating.