table issue (word 97)

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Hi,
We have imported a table from a different editor like word. Every thing is fine but when i select all the rows+coloums of table nothing will be shown in style and font combobox where as if i indvidually select each row every thing related style and font of that row is shown.
Any ideas
(note While importing no errors were recived)
(Tool name:Framemaker)

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No, there’s no error – all this means is that the font, style, etc of the various cells are not all the same, so Word doesn’t know which one to display. When you select, as long as these are the same they will display – as soon as you select something where its different that box will be blank.

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Hi,
Thanx for replay
We checked every indivudual cell they all have same font and style.
(Assuming 6 rows with 5 cols table)
1.Secondly this doesnt happen if 5 rows all cols are selected
2.if selected in reverse order from 6th row towards 1st row also same
only happens if all rows selected.

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Sounds like it’s something in the last row then – it only takes one character to be in a different font and the box will be blank …

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Hi,
Any way to find this alien character which may be causing this problem.
Thanx

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Only by trial and error, I’m afraid (unless you can see that a character is different) – select entire rows one at a time until you find the row that doesn’t display it’s font, then select each cell individually until you find the cell involved, then click at the beginning of the cell and move along it character by character to find the rogue one.

On the other hand, if you want to make all the cells the same, just select the entire table and click on the dropdown arrow for the font, style, or size box that’s blank, and you’ll see the list is still there. Choose the one you want and it doesn’t matter which one was different, it will be the same now!

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Hi,
Infact i tried this even after updating like this that alien character doesnt seem to budge. the list is entries in font and style will be still be blank.
I have attached doc file causing this issue for further ref.
To test select all rows and indvidual rows to see the diff.
Thanx

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Well, you got me! I can see what’s happening, but each combination of selections gave a different result, and nothing I tried would fix it!

Anyone else got any good ideas!

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I can’t believe you’ve spent all this time and energy fretting about a VERY SHORT TABLE. Just print it out, open a new document, and RETYPE THE DARN THING. You could have done that in no time flat. And all the formatting would have been okay from the get-go.

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Just seconding Anne’s advice: we had to convert loads of FrameMaker documents to Word 97 a few years ago and there were features in the Frame tables that just rendered them unformattable in Word – if I recall correctly, one example is that the row heights were locked and there was nothing we could do to change them.

I believe some of the table formatting features in Word 2000 more closely parallel the way Frame tables work, so you might have more success bringing them into Word 2000 (but I’ve never tested this).

My advice when bringing Frame tables into Word is to just get rid of the Frame tables and recreate them in Word. If necessary you can copy/paste the textual content to save retyping, but the Frame table structures shouldn’t be kept.

Gary

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Two comments on this thread:

(1) When you select more than 50 “paragraphs,” Word typically stops filling in the drop-down displays on the toolbar, even if they are all the same. If you count the end-of-cell markers, all internal paragraph marks, and end-of-row markers, you might be exceeding 50 “paragraphs.” (But I didn’t actually check.)

(2) To inspect or clean up table formatting, it may be helpful to convert the tables to tab-separated text, check it out, and then re-select and convert back to a table.

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