Table Gridlines

[bobneworleans]

I cut several tables on a Xeon processor from Intel's web site, pasted
them into a new Word 2007 document, then used them to learn how to
reformat tables. After working with Table Properties for a while, I
was able to make the tables appear exactly the way I wanted. I
converted one table into text, reformatted it, then converted it back
to a table.

I alao discovered that the View Gridlines button was helpful in
reformatting. But with gridlines on, I am puzzled by the fact that
all the imported tables have DOUBLE dashed outlines except for the
table that was converted from text, which has only a SINGLE dashed
outline.

Has anyone seen this? If so, can you explain the second, slightly
larger set of outlines? Is it possible that the inside outlines are
for the individual cells and the outside outline is for the entire
table? If so, then why is the converted table missing the slightly
larger second set?
Bob

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What you're seeing is typical of an HTML table. Many of them are nested,
which could contribute to what you see, but most of the difference comes
from a difference in the way they're designed. I'm not entirely sure how
this works (as I've primarily seen this formatting in FrontPage), but
experiment with what happens if you create a Word table from scratch (with
the single gridlines) and then go to the Table tab of Table Properties,
click Options..., check the box for "Allow spacing between cells," and
increase the setting to, say, 0.05". Is the result similar to what you saw
in the table pasted from the Web?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[bobneworleans]

Suzanne,
Thanks for your help! Yes, increasing the spacing between cells to .
02 made the gridlines of the two tables appear almost exactly the
same. I think this is what the designer of the table I imported did
because, after creating a nested table, I see the cell marker for the
outside table. This does not appear on any of the imported tables.

Now that I know these features exist, I like to understand why I might
want to use them at some point in the future. Do you use cell spacing
and/or nested tables?

Also, I was able to combine two adjacent tables by deleting the
paragraph mark between them but this did not work when trying to
combine the table that was converted from text. I can see a
difference in the ruler bar: one table has hash marks in the light
blue areas before, after, and in between the columns. What do these
indicate? I presume, if I can make the tables identical, that they
will combine. Is this true?
Bob

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm not sure what these hash marks would be. I assume you're not referring
to the end-of-cell and end-of-row markers (¤). The usual reasons that tables
will not combine are that (a) one of the tables is wrapped (look at the
Table tab of Table Properties for each and make sure that text wrapping is
set to None), (b) one or more of the top rows of the second table is marked
as a heading row, (c) there are subtle differences in column widths. FWIW,
(c) should not make any difference, but reportedly it sometimes does.

That said, I've occasionally had two portions of a table created from the
same template (in fact, two parts of a table that had been split) that
absolutely refused to merge, for no reason that I could determine. Being
under deadline to finish the document, and since it didn't actually make any
difference in this instance, I left well enough alone, but I was still
curious about what the reason could have been.

In such instances, what will almost always work if the tables are in fact
functionally identical is to convert both to text and then select the entire
chunk of text and convert it back to a table.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

Suzanne,
Thanks for your help! Yes, increasing the spacing between cells to .
02 made the gridlines of the two tables appear almost exactly the
same. I think this is what the designer of the table I imported did
because, after creating a nested table, I see the cell marker for the
outside table. This does not appear on any of the imported tables.

Now that I know these features exist, I like to understand why I might
want to use them at some point in the future. Do you use cell spacing
and/or nested tables?

Also, I was able to combine two adjacent tables by deleting the
paragraph mark between them but this did not work when trying to
combine the table that was converted from text. I can see a
difference in the ruler bar: one table has hash marks in the light
blue areas before, after, and in between the columns. What do these
indicate? I presume, if I can make the tables identical, that they
will combine. Is this true?
Bob

 

[bobneworleans]

Suzanne,
What I mean by "hash marks" are ruler symbols that look like # but
with more lines. They show up in the margins and gutter areas of
table rulers. After reformatting both tables, these marks are now in
both rulers. If you see these marks do you know what they represent?

While the tables that wanted to merge appeared very similar, the
gridlines did not match EXACTLY. Is there are way to select two
tables at the same time and apply identical formatting to both? Or is
there a way to copy the formatting of one table to another, something
like Format Painter?

I turned off Text wrapping for both tables and turned off header row
for the second one. Apparently, I had a situation like you described
where no matter what you did, you couldn't get them to merge. It
really doesn't matter any more because I converted both tables to text
and back, as you suggested, solving the problem.

One more thing: if the row heights are not consistent in all cells,
will that prevent tables from merging?
Bob

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Okay, you're talking about the ruler. That just represents the boundary
between cells. If you mouse over it, you should get a double-headed arrow
and a ScreenTip that says "Move Table Column." You can drag those the same
as you can drag the table gridlines to change column widths or the table
width. There's more on this in the "Sizing rows and columns" section of
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/TableBasics.htm.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

Suzanne,
What I mean by "hash marks" are ruler symbols that look like # but
with more lines. They show up in the margins and gutter areas of
table rulers. After reformatting both tables, these marks are now in
both rulers. If you see these marks do you know what they represent?

While the tables that wanted to merge appeared very similar, the
gridlines did not match EXACTLY. Is there are way to select two
tables at the same time and apply identical formatting to both? Or is
there a way to copy the formatting of one table to another, something
like Format Painter?

I turned off Text wrapping for both tables and turned off header row
for the second one. Apparently, I had a situation like you described
where no matter what you did, you couldn't get them to merge. It
really doesn't matter any more because I converted both tables to text
and back, as you suggested, solving the problem.

One more thing: if the row heights are not consistent in all cells,
will that prevent tables from merging?
Bob