Table style keeps losing its font

[Todd Crandell]

We have created a table style in Word 2002. We are working on separate
chapters (separate Word files) of a document based on a common template.
But the fonts in the tables keep changing.

The Problem:
Each time a new person opens the file, the font for the heading row and the
last row changes. The font we are using is Trebuchet MS. However, this
gets changed (seemingly at random) to all sorts of other fonts, including
Arial Black, Georgia, CommonBullets, and others. Only the heading row and
last row fonts change.

More Background (to rule out some possible causes I've seen in this
newsgroup):
Our desired font is Trebuchet MS. Other font settings are: 8pt for the whole
table; 9pt bold for the heading; 8pt bold for the last row. We haven't
changed the Normal style in the template from Times New Roman 12pt, and we
have consistently applied Normal paragraph style to the entire table before
applying our table style.

We are working in different offices and the files reside on one office's
server. But this problem seems to happen often (but not always) no matter
who opens the file.

Any solutions? Thanks


Todd Crandell
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Todd,

The one "simple" explanation that's not covered in your analysis is: do the
users have Trebuchet MS installed on their machines? Word will automatically
substitute fonts if it can't find one.

We have created a table style in Word 2002. We are working on separate
chapters (separate Word files) of a document based on a common template.
But the fonts in the tables keep changing.

The Problem:
Each time a new person opens the file, the font for the heading row and the
last row changes. The font we are using is Trebuchet MS. However, this
gets changed (seemingly at random) to all sorts of other fonts, including
Arial Black, Georgia, CommonBullets, and others. Only the heading row and
last row fonts change.

More Background (to rule out some possible causes I've seen in this
newsgroup):
Our desired font is Trebuchet MS. Other font settings are: 8pt for the whole
table; 9pt bold for the heading; 8pt bold for the last row. We haven't
changed the Normal style in the template from Times New Roman 12pt, and we
have consistently applied Normal paragraph style to the entire table before
applying our table style.

We are working in different offices and the files reside on one office's
server. But this problem seems to happen often (but not always) no matter
who opens the file.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Todd Crandell]

Good question, but... Yes, the users do have that font installed. I also
think I've ruled out the possibility of anyone modifying their Normal.dot
file (it doesn't seem that anyone has modified their Normal or Table Normal
styles.)

Right now I'm suspecting some sort of corruption (though I'm not sure where
it lies). Right now I'm modifying the document template by replacing the
Table Normal style with the Table Normal style from a clean Normal.dot
template. I'm then re-creating my custom table style based on the clean
Table Normal style. I'll report back to tell whether this works.


Cindy Meister wrote three days ago:

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Todd,

Sorry you didn't get an answer.
IMO table styles are too buggy for serious work.

In theory, you shouldn't need to apply the "Normal" paragraph style to a
table that uses a table style. But I doubt that this is the cause of your
problems.

If you find some reproducible scenario in which the bug appears, you should
report it to Microsoft.

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Todd C]

I think I've found an acceptable solution. I'm now using a table style AND
paragraph styles to get the result I need. The reason I don't simply use
paragraph styles is because the rows on our tables have alternating shading
(row stripes) and applying that manually to lots of large tables would take
a long time. The table style handles the shading nicely. Here's what I
did:

First, I created a table style that only defines the borders and shading I
need. In defining the table style, I made no changes to ANY font attributes
(I left them blank, so they don't even say Times New Roman or 12 points or
anything). Second, I defined the paragraph styles for the different parts
of the table (the header, regular text, the totals row, table notes).

To format a table, I first apply the table style, then I apply the paragraph
styles to the appropriate cells. This seems to be staying stable now and
the fonts are no longer spontaneously changing to random fonts from the list
of fonts.

Todd

 

[dawgpilot]

don't know if this will show up since this page will not allow me to post a
new question. i cannot get the text in my table to align on the bottom of
cells. I have tried all of the options in table preferences, table format,
paragraph format, cell format, column/row format. NOTHING WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!
all i am trying to do is put horizontal lines on the bottom of an MS Office
fax template (professional). I used a table because if i use lines then when
i add text it of course moves the lines.
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Luc]

Have you tried applying Ctrl+Q to the culprit cells?
Luc