Table formatting (Word 2000)

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I have a document with a table comprising of several rows and different number of columns in the rows.

My problem is I am wanting to reduce the size of some of the cells, so I can add extra cells to the end of the row.

I select the cell, right click and select Table properties then change the size in the Cell tab/Prefered Width then click ok. BUT NOTHING happens. The size doesn’t change.

Any suggestions

Thanks in advance

What am I doing wrong???

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I’ve experienced something like this (perhaps dragging the table cell boundaries on the ruler) and I can’t remember how I got around it. I can say for sure that having different numbers of columns in rows of the same table leads to all sorts of problems, and should be avoided if possible. If you don’t really need them to be in the same table (i.e., you are not sorting them together, and not treating the table as a unit in a macro), you can nevertheless create the appearance of a single table by creating hidden paragraphs between the rows:

1. Place insertion point in second row.
2. Choose Split Table from the Table menu.
3. In the new empty paragraph, type a brief note to yourself, such as Hidden paragraph.
4. Select that paragraph in its entirety and change the font to hidden using Ctrl+Shift+H or the Font… dialog on the Format menu.
5. Choose Print Preview from the File menu to confirm that the table appears to be seamless.

I predict that its various parts will behave better after that.

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Jeff

Thanks for the information, that certainly works.

Thanks again

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Word 2000 and XP have major differences in the way they handle tables compared with earlier versions of Word. Because Bill wanted more HTML friendly applications the programmers thought it would be good for the tables to behave more like tables in HTML. What the general public end up with are conflicting pieces of information regarding how the table cells should be positioned. You also get differences in how the table cells resize according to what you have selected in the table.

In earlier versions, you could position the cursor in a row and resize something and have it happen only to that row. In Word 2000 you have to select at least a complete cell on that row to affect only that row. There are also nasty autoresizing options buried deep in the table formatting dialog that will allow one direct command to be overridden by another command (on by default). Examples of these are when the table preferred width conflicts with the sum of the column preferred widths. Another is hidden in the table options (automatically resize to fit contents).

Jefferson’s suggestion is good for when you just can’t come to terms with the design changes but you will get more mileage out of actually working out the precedance of conflicting commands in the most recent versions of Word (and select all the cells you want to affect with column resizing).

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We had a document like this to contend with yesterday. It looked like someone had semi-randomly (I couldn’t find any rhyme or reason to it) merged cells in a table that was 3 or 4 pages long. It had gotten to the point where no matter what sizes you put in any fields in Table Properties, the table just would not display within the margins on the page. Autofit to page did nothing. We had to split cells and realign columns and set individual cell widths all over the place to get it to work. What a pain.

Lee Morgan

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When I run into a table that has columns that don’t exactly line up or merged cells, I find that a lot of times it saves time if I convert table to text, then immediately convert back to a table. In order to keep info in the cell where it belongs, I usually add tabs in the cell that was horizontally merged to represent the total number of cells that were merged. Haven’t done too much with vertically merged cells, but I don’t think you need to add anything there. Once you convert back to a table, everything is where it belongs and you can add or delete columns with no trouble. Hope this saves you some time.

Nancy Potter

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