Strange Behavior with Tables in Word 2003

[Jameseee]

My boss uses tables in Word and is having strange problems.

She creates a table (4 columns and 18 rows, for example). She fills in the
table and everything looks OK.

When she prints (or print preview), Word is printing Column 1 in the proper
position until it reaches the bottom of Page 1; then it continues with the
second page in the next column (but it is still Column 1). In other words,
Word is placing the entire table on one page so that it prints something
like the following:

C1, R1 C1, R6 C1, R11 C1, R16
C1, R2 C1, R7 C1, R12 C1, R17
C1, R3 C1, R8 C1, R13 C1, R18
C1, R4 C1, R9 C1, R14 C2, R1
C1, R5 C1, R10 C1, R15 C2, R2

Switch back to Normal View and everything looks OK again. Any part of the
table that won't fit on one page is ignored.

Everything isn't EXACTLY as shown above. For example, C1, R1 may also
include a character or two of C2, R1 before C1, R6 and so on across the
page.

I can't see anything in the formatting that should be causing a problem, but
this is happening often.

Often, she is working on documents she received via e-mail and is opening
them directly from within Outlook. I have told her not to do this, but ...
Could this be causing a problem with her documents?

Has anyone seen this before? It's driving me crazy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

James

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Okay, by "Normal view" do you really mean *Normal* view or Print Layout view
(which is normal for you/her)? If the former, then check to see how many
columns the document has (Format | Columns). Make sure this is set to One.
If that's not the issue, make sure that the table is not wrapped (set text
wrapping to None on the Table tab of Table Properties).

 

[Jameseee]

That's it. Thanks.

The document was set to 4 columns and then, the table was set to 4 columns.

If it had been a snake ...

Later.

James

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Thanks for the feedback. From your description that's what it sounded very
much like. FWIW, if you operate with text boundaries displayed, such
conditions are much more obvious.