strange behaviour of boxed paragraph in table

[J. Verburg]

Hi,

I am having trouble with incomplete borders (using Word 2002 SP3 on
WinXpProf SP2). I put some borders around a paragraph that is in a table
cell (not around the cell itself!). The rest of the table has no borders.
Sometime the border of the paragraph is a complete box with four similar
sides, and sometimes the right side border of the box is missing, and the
left side border is only half the width. I found some sort of solution, but
I would like to know if there is an explanation that can help me do things
easier.

You can reproduce an example of my problem like this:

1: incomplete border:
Insert a table. Select the table and turn off al the borders. Then type some
text in one of the cells. Select the text (not the entire cell) and then in
the borders/shading dialog define a border around it, and apply to the
paragraph. The border around the paragraph is incomplete.

2: complete border:
Insert a table. (Do NOT change the table borders right now). Then type some
text in one of the cells. Select the text (not the entire cell) and then in
the borders/shading dialog define a border around it, and apply to the
paragraph. NOW select the whole table, and turn off all table borders. The
border around the paragraph remains complete.

This is a trial and error solution, which has the problem that I have a lot
of tables that already have their borders turned off. I want to apply some
borders around paragraphs in those tables, but end up with them incomplete,
or have to rebuild the tables. I suspect that there is a difference
somewhere in the properties of both tables, and maybe I can edit that
afterwards, so I can fix the borders in the borderless tables.

Any ideas greatly appreciated!

Jeroen Verburg

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi J.,

Do the borders print correctly? There can be some
display issues with this in print preview and in
print layout view depending on how much of the text
you're boxing in and it's relation to the edge of the
cells. In some cases changing the cell
margins in Table=>Properties will help in others changing
to a different printer driver for testing will work.

The workaround you listed may not always work unfortunately and may
not produce the same results if the same file is opened
by another person on another computer. (Word 2003 has
the same issue, although not as often).

Do you have a URL for a Word created webpage or a .doc file download
that shows the problem?

=========
Hi,

I am having trouble with incomplete borders (using Word 2002 SP3 on
WinXpProf SP2). I put some borders around a paragraph that is in a table
cell (not around the cell itself!). The rest of the table has no borders.
Sometime the border of the paragraph is a complete box with four similar
sides, and sometimes the right side border of the box is missing, and the
left side border is only half the width. I found some sort of solution, but
I would like to know if there is an explanation that can help me do things
easier.

You can reproduce an example of my problem like this:

1: incomplete border:
Insert a table. Select the table and turn off al the borders. Then type some
text in one of the cells. Select the text (not the entire cell) and then in
the borders/shading dialog define a border around it, and apply to the
paragraph. The border around the paragraph is incomplete.

2: complete border:
Insert a table. (Do NOT change the table borders right now). Then type some
text in one of the cells. Select the text (not the entire cell) and then in
the borders/shading dialog define a border around it, and apply to the
paragraph. NOW select the whole table, and turn off all table borders. The
border around the paragraph remains complete.

This is a trial and error solution, which has the problem that I have a lot
of tables that already have their borders turned off. I want to apply some
borders around paragraphs in those tables, but end up with them incomplete,
or have to rebuild the tables. I suspect that there is a difference
somewhere in the properties of both tables, and maybe I can edit that
afterwards, so I can fix the borders in the borderless tables.

Any ideas greatly appreciated!

Jeroen Verburg >>

--
Let us know if this helped you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

For Everyday MS Office tips to "use right away" -
http://microsoft.com/events/series/administrativetipsandtricks.mspx

 

[J. Verburg]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for thinking along.
The borders do not print correctly either.
I have uploaded the (small) file I used for testing at this location:
http://www.knuffelkwijtsijt.nl/dump/feest.doc

The bottom two tables are the ones to look at. They show the result of first
the uncorrect box, and then the correct box.

I looked into the paragraph style of both cells as well, and there a
difference shows up.The incorrect box mentions the border as being a box or
something, and the correct one mentions each side separately. Yet when I
mark each side seperately (using the INcorrect way i described earlier, it
still ends up as the box-like style. (I hope I am making sense here, I do
not have the right Word-version here at home.)

Jeroen

 

[Stefan Blom]

Does decreasing the distance between borders and text make a difference?
Here's how: In the Borders and Shading dialog box, click the Borders
tab, and then click Options. At "From text", specify zero for Top, Left,
Bottom, and Right.

Other things to test: Add left and right indents, and/or spacing before
or after, to the paragraphs, and see if that helps. (The idea is to get
a distance between cell boundaries and paragraph borders.)

In my version (Word 2000) the above suggestions improves the situation,
but I wouldn't say that it seems to work correctly (or even that the
result is predictable).

So perhaps using cell borders and living with their limitations is the
only choice, after all. :-(

 

[J. Verburg]

I think I have tried everything, even using the Equation Editor to create
lines around the text (as suggested at mvps.org ). In the end the best
solution was to add a very thin row (height 0,05 cm) below the bordered
cell. This 'catches' the bottom border of that top row from spilling to the
next page, as long as I mark the top row to keep with the next paragraph. I
would rather not have any 'strange' items in a document that others have to
use regularly, to prevent users from meddling with what should be left
alone, but I think this will not cause big problems.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Hope this workaround can be of use to others
too.

Jeroen

 

[Stefan Blom]

An empty row? Isn't that cheating? <g> Seriously, I'm glad to learn that
you found a solution!

 

[J. Verburg]

'Cheat' is my middle name. It's better for my teeth and hair as well...

Jeroen 'Cheat' Verburg