trouble with table styles

[nshewmaker]

I have a few problems creating and using a style for tables in my Word document

1) Last row is exempt from striping. This, I'm guessing, is working as programmed, if not ideally

2) I can not set the font to Arial 10 for some strange reason. I can use Arial 9 and Arial 12. When I set it to 10, it disappears from the drop-down box and the table text adopts the 12pt of Normal

3) I do not always get the desired formatting. Shouldn't the same style result in the same formatting? Primarily, I've noticed that the last row is not as tall as it should be. I've also noticed some cells (most notably A1) losing formatting shortly after it's applied

4) If I Clear Formatting to try and fix any of the problems above, the cells now have extra space between the text and the bottom of the cell. I thought this might have something to do with a font or paragraph style, but other than using Undo, I haven't found where this exists as an alterable setting

I suspect this all might be related, so that is why they're in the same post. I can supply more details if needed

I was really excited to see this feature in Word 2003, but it's turning out to be quite a headache. Can you help?

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?bnNoZXdtYWtlcg==?=,

1) Last row is exempt from striping. This, I'm guessing, is working as programmed, if not ideally.

I think this depends on how you set up the table formatting, otherwise. IOW, if
you specify any Last row formatting, then Striping will ignore the last row. At
least, that's been my experience.

2) I can not set the font to Arial 10 for some strange reason. I can use Arial 9

and Arial 12. When I set it to 10, it disappears from the drop-down box and the
table text adopts the 12pt of Normal.Yeah, this problem has been around since the feature was introduced in Word 2002.
It's been reported to MS as a bug, but so far hasn't been fixed. I have no idea
WHY it happens. But it's definitely a PITA. You might try Verdana, instead.

3) I do not always get the desired formatting. Shouldn't the same style result

in the same formatting? Primarily, I've noticed that the last row is not as tall
as it should be. I've also noticed some cells (most notably A1) losing formatting
shortly after it's applied.A Table style will NOT affect row height (or column width). Not sure what you mean
by A1, can you be more specific?

4) If I Clear Formatting to try and fix any of the problems above, the cells now

have extra space between the text and the bottom of the cell. I thought this might
have something to do with a font or paragraph style, but other than using Undo, I
haven't found where this exists as an alterable setting.No idea exactly what Clear Formatting may be doing, but I certainly would try to
avoid using it with Table or List styles. A couple of observations that might help
steady things down a bit:
- Don't change the Normal style, leave it at the installation default of Times New
Roman 12. The fonts in table styles only work as you'd expect if you don't change
the Normal style in the document.
- Make sure the style for the current selection is "Normal" when you create a
table. This is the only way to ensure your table style settings will all be
reflected

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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