Table borders reappear no matter what I do

[Bill Weylock]

Hi everybody. Been a long time. Many changes including a new job that has me
a lot busier these days.

Hope maybe someone can help me with this. I have a long questionnaire in
Word 2004 that includes many tables. I think I know how to manage tables
pretty well and don¹t usualy have trouble.

Out of the blue, however, I have a series of tables separated by outline
headings that insist on having a border under the last row. I have selected
the entire table and deselected the border several times. Everything looks
great. Then a minute later, after I scroll away and come back or just go
look at another open doc and come back, the border is there again!

Have I sinned? Anything to suggest?

The doc has complex formatting. It¹s not feasible to do the ³copy everything
but the last return and paste into a fresh document² thing.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? Is there an explanation? Of course
there is, but can you think what it might be????

Thanks very much! Making me craaaazy!


Best,


- Bill


Tiger 10.4.11
Office 2004
Windows XP Pro SP2
Office 2003
G5 1.8Ghz (single)
ThinkPad T40
Treo 650
(sigh)

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Bill,

Welcome back! It *is* a long time! But I still cherish the quote of yours
that I put in "Bend Word to Your Will": "Take 20 minutes or so and read up
on styles in Word. Yeah, yeah, the knowledge should be available in pill
form and the jerks at MS should long ago have introduced telekinetic
formatting. For now, though, you¹re working in Word, which is a cool program
if you grasp styles and infuriating if you don¹t."

Um, as to your problem...

Are the outline headings the only paragraphs between the tables? What
happens if you insert a blank paragraph mark above and below the headings,
in Normal or Body Text style? (That's one of the few instances when I format
my documents with blank paragraphs.) Sometimes the table is influenced by
the paragraph mark above a table (or below -- can't quite remember right
now, but I think it's the former). I don't understand why.

Hmm, I bet John McGhie will relish this one; he is hungry to exercise his
brain in this area (I bet he is hungry through-and-through right now, too,
being only a day or so back in Australia after several weeks eating nothing
but Chinese food...).

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from North America and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
====================================================

Hi everybody. Been a long time. Many changes including a new job that has me a
lot busier these days.

Hope maybe someone can help me with this. I have a long questionnaire in Word
2004 that includes many tables. I think I know how to manage tables pretty
well and don¹t usualy have trouble.

Out of the blue, however, I have a series of tables separated by outline
headings that insist on having a border under the last row. I have selected
the entire table and deselected the border several times. Everything looks
great. Then a minute later, after I scroll away and come back or just go look
at another open doc and come back, the border is there again!

Have I sinned? Anything to suggest?

The doc has complex formatting. It¹s not feasible to do the ³copy everything
but the last return and paste into a fresh document² thing.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? Is there an explanation? Of course
there is, but can you think what it might be????

Thanks very much! Making me craaaazy!


Best,


- Bill


Tiger 10.4.11
Office 2004
Windows XP Pro SP2
Office 2003
G5 1.8Ghz (single)
ThinkPad T40
Treo 650
(sigh)

===========================================================

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Bill:

Five gets you ten it's a Toxic Table Style

Well, ALL Table Styles are toxic, and now you can see why

The person who designed table styles in Word was a computer programmer, and
as we all know, they do all of their documentation in TextEdit or an ASCII
line editor, so he completely misunderstood the use-case.

What we *wanted* was a "wrapper" style that would apply normal Character and
Paragraph styles as a group to Tables. That's the way documenters format
tables anyway: we thought it would be nice to have it happen with a single
click.

What we *got* was a bastardised object that is a single "style" that
attempts to format the text and borders of a table as a single style.
Utterly useless.

I warn people very strongly never to use Table Styles, because they create
problems like you have. The worst of which is that there is no "good" way
to remove one once it has been applied.

There are two things you can try: you can apply the style named Table
Normal, or you can convert the table to text and back to a table again.

If you have not customised your Table Normal style, it "should" have no
formatting, and thus, remove whatever is producing you problem.

Hope this helps

Hi everybody. Been a long time. Many changes including a new job that has me
a lot busier these days.

Hope maybe someone can help me with this. I have a long questionnaire in
Word 2004 that includes many tables. I think I know how to manage tables
pretty well and don¹t usualy have trouble.

Out of the blue, however, I have a series of tables separated by outline
headings that insist on having a border under the last row. I have selected
the entire table and deselected the border several times. Everything looks
great. Then a minute later, after I scroll away and come back or just go
look at another open doc and come back, the border is there again!

Have I sinned? Anything to suggest?

The doc has complex formatting. It¹s not feasible to do the ³copy everything
but the last return and paste into a fresh document² thing.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? Is there an explanation? Of course
there is, but can you think what it might be????

Thanks very much! Making me craaaazy!


Best,


- Bill


Tiger 10.4.11
Office 2004
Windows XP Pro SP2
Office 2003
G5 1.8Ghz (single)
ThinkPad T40
Treo 650
(sigh)

--
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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]