Semi-enabled cursor in table cell

[johnthebaptist]

Running Office Standard 2007 on Visa Home Basic.

The cursor displays in the bottom half of the cell only. Above the text in
the lower half are numbers at the left margin, remnants of a numbered list
either automated or manual, both attempted in working with this table. The
cursor will not display in this section of the cell. I can't do anything
with these numbers.

The table has two columns: Date and Remarks. When I tab from Date to
Remarks in this row the entire Remarks cell area is selected: all the text
in the lower half and with a vertical bar to the right of the numbers in the
upper half.

Somehow or other this cell acquired a dashed border.

How do I clear the upper half of this cell (and others like it)?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Running Office Standard 2007 on Visa Home Basic.

The cursor displays in the bottom half of the cell only. Above the text in
the lower half are numbers at the left margin, remnants of a numbered list
either automated or manual, both attempted in working with this table. The
cursor will not display in this section of the cell. I can't do anything
with these numbers.

The table has two columns: Date and Remarks. When I tab from Date to
Remarks in this row the entire Remarks cell area is selected: all the text
in the lower half and with a vertical bar to the right of the numbers in the
upper half.

Somehow or other this cell acquired a dashed border.

How do I clear the upper half of this cell (and others like it)?

It sounds like the table (actually the binary part that controls the table's
behavior) has become corrupted.

Follow the advice in http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm :

"If you have isolated the corruption to a particular table, either:

* Paste the table into Excel; delete the Word table; paste the Excel table
back into Word, select the new table (Alt+Double-click), press Ctrl+Spacebar to
remove the manual formatting, and reformat the table, or:
* Select Table + Convert Table to Text, select the text that results, and
select Table + Convert Text to Table. This has the advantage that you lose much
less formatting than using the Excel method, but the disadvantage that if a
corruption is stored in a paragraph mark within the table, it will remain."

 

[johnthebaptist]

It sounds like the table (actually the binary part that controls the table's
behavior) has become corrupted.

Follow the advice in http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm :

"If you have isolated the corruption to a particular table, either:

* Paste the table into Excel; delete the Word table; paste the Excel table
back into Word, select the new table (Alt+Double-click), press Ctrl+Spacebar to
remove the manual formatting, and reformat the table, or:
* Select Table + Convert Table to Text, select the text that results, and
select Table + Convert Text to Table. This has the advantage that you lose much
less formatting than using the Excel method, but the disadvantage that if a
corruption is stored in a paragraph mark within the table, it will remain."


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

Thanks, Jay. You did answer my question; whether it solved my problem or
not remains to be seen. I'll let you know.

 

[johnthebaptist]

Thanks, Jay. You did answer my question; whether it solved my problem or
not remains to be seen. I'll let you know.

I thought I'd try option 2 first as being simpler, and successfully
converted my table to text. So far I can't reconvert to the original table.
Here are the relevant instructions with my comments:

Convert text to a table

1. Insert separator characters — such as commas or tabs — to indicate where
you want to divide the text into columns.

In the header row I inserted a tab between Date and Remarks to
separate the two columns and pressed the Paragraph button on the ribbon right
after Remarks to start a new row.

Result after the Convert to Table command: a two-column table. In
the header row Date and Remarks were in the first column and the automated
date in the second column. I expected the automated date to go into the
first column of the second row.

So the desired two columns were not separated by the tab and the
Paragraph button on the ribbon did not start a new row. Where did I go wrong?

Use paragraph marks to indicate where you want to begin a new row.

For example, in a list with two words on a line, insert a comma or a tab
after the first word to create a two-column table.

2. Select the text that you want to convert.

On the Insert tab, in the Tables group, click Table, and then click Convert
Text to Table.

 

[Jay Freedman]

I thought I'd try option 2 first as being simpler, and successfully
converted my table to text. So far I can't reconvert to the original
table. Here are the relevant instructions with my comments:

Convert text to a table

1. Insert separator characters - such as commas or tabs - to
indicate where you want to divide the text into columns.

In the header row I inserted a tab between Date and Remarks to
separate the two columns and pressed the Paragraph button on the
ribbon right after Remarks to start a new row.

Result after the Convert to Table command: a two-column
table. In the header row Date and Remarks were in the first column
and the automated date in the second column. I expected the
automated date to go into the first column of the second row.

So the desired two columns were not separated by the tab and
the Paragraph button on the ribbon did not start a new row. Where
did I go wrong?

Use paragraph marks to indicate where you want to begin a new row.

For example, in a list with two words on a line, insert a comma or a
tab after the first word to create a two-column table.

2. Select the text that you want to convert.

On the Insert tab, in the Tables group, click Table, and then click
Convert Text to Table.

I'm not completely sure, because your description doesn't match my
experience, but I think the problem is this:

The "Paragraph button on the ribbon" -- by which I assume you mean the
button in the Paragraph group of the Home ribbon that shows the ¶ symbol --
does NOT insert a paragraph mark at the end of a line to start a new row.
That button (whose tooltip identifies it as the Show/Hide command) toggles
the display of nonprinting characters
(http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm).

To insert a paragraph mark at the end of a line, put the cursor there and
press the Enter key.

The other thing you need to do, in the Convert Text To Table dialog, is make
sure the "Tabs" option is selected in the "Separate text at" section at the
bottom. It should be selected already, but you need to look at it and change
it if something else is selected.

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

 

[johnthebaptist]

I'm back at my original table. After all my experimenting it now has a
bizarre display of columns in its second half. I think the original data is
still in there somewhere. There is no Undo option.

What I'd like to end up with is a two-column table, Date and Remarks, either
in Word or Excel.

Originally I had hoped to be able to search Remarks by an automated numbered
list in the Remarks column as well as by the manually entered text, but find
that Word will not search automated data, either under Date or under Remarks.

Excel will search by a numbered list in a dedicated column but when last
tried would not update the numbering to correspond with the associated text.

So now I'll be satisfied if, after removing any corruption, I can just
search text in the Remarks column. Where to from here?