Problem pasting landscape table rows

[les.a.scott]

I'm having a problem where MS Word seems to get its knickers in a
twist when pasting rows into a table when the page is landscape. What
happens is that the inserted rows do not align with the rest of the
table. They appear to be in the same proportion as the original cells
but only the width of a portrait page. I'm using Word 2003 SP1 on XP
Pro SP2.

I have had the problem in the past when I worked somewhere else, and
managed to get around the problem by simply restarting Word. Now I
can't seem to shake it off at all. This is precisely what I am
doing...

* click to the left of the row that I want to duplicate, causing the
entire row to be highlighted

* press Ctrl-X to cut the row

* press Ctrl-V twice to restore the cut row and insert the new row.

Neither of the pasted rows retain the landscape width, and the
rightmost part of the pasted rows are, according to the ruler, where
they'd be if the page was set to portrait orientation.

I have tried variations of the above, such as copy instead of cut,
placing the cursor in the leftmost cell below where I want to insert
and selecting Insert Rows from the Edit menu, every possible
incarnation of Paste Special (even when I knew they were wrong, I tried
them because I didn't want to leave any stone unturned).

The document itself doesn't appear to be the cause of the problem
because I can insert the rows successfully when:

* logged in as another user on another PC

* logged in as myself on another PC

* logged in as another user on my usual PC.

Prior to yesterday morning, it worked perfectly fine when logged in as
myself on my usual PC. I have not changed my setup in Word at all.
Everything worked fine, and then it didn't.

The document itself is all landscape. There is only 1 section. It
contains some text prior to a reasonably large table that covers about
25 pages thus far. There is some trailing text after the table, and a
footer and header that contain text and some field codes. There is
nothing unusual at all about the document.

Has anyone else encountered such a problem before? Was there a simple
fix? Is it just that God hates me??

Les

 

[Stefan Blom]

Did you try splitting the table, pasting the rows as a separate table
(which seems to paste them in the correct size) and then merge the
tables?

 

[Leopold Stotch]

Did you try splitting the table, pasting the rows as a separate table
(which seems to paste them in the correct size) and then merge the
tables?

I didn't try that, although further investigation suggests that it's
related to the clipboard. On another PC, the problem occurred when the
clipboard was collecting copied text etc and the clipboard thing
appeared down the right hand side. When I killed it, the problem went
away. This is not identical to the problem on my usual PC, although
the end result was the same.

The work around was to insert a new row (it did that OK) and then paste
the parts that I wanted to keep into the individual cells. The best
workaround, of course, was to use the PC of someone who's absent from
work at the moment.

Thank you for your suggestion. I may try that just for the hell of it,
but I'll see what parts of the clipboard can be disabled first. I'm
happy to have a single-shot clipboard just like the old days; 24 things
seems a bit extreme.

Thanks

Les

 

[Leopold Stotch]

I didn't try that, although further investigation suggests that it's
related to the clipboard. On another PC, the problem occurred when the
clipboard was collecting copied text etc and the clipboard thing
appeared down the right hand side. When I killed it, the problem went
away. This is not identical to the problem on my usual PC, although
the end result was the same.

The work around was to insert a new row (it did that OK) and then paste
the parts that I wanted to keep into the individual cells. The best
workaround, of course, was to use the PC of someone who's absent from
work at the moment.

Thank you for your suggestion. I may try that just for the hell of it,
but I'll see what parts of the clipboard can be disabled first. I'm
happy to have a single-shot clipboard just like the old days; 24 things
seems a bit extreme.

I disabled every conceivable part of the Office Clipboard, and the
problem has gone away!! I'm sure this problem is well documented
somewhere if only people know what to search for.

If I find a reference from Micro$oft or elsewhere, I'll post that too
in case anyone else is interested.

Les

 

[Stefan Blom]

The KB article below seems to describe a related issue, although it
was written for Word 2000:

WD2000: Table Rows Are Uneven When You Collect and Paste Rows to New
Document
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/224737/en-us

See also the following (which may or may not be relevant to you):

WD2002: How to Use the Paste Options Button to Paste Data into a Table
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/284842/en-us

Options used for Smart Cut and Paste settings in Word 2003 and Word
2002
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297680/en-us