Font size of paragraph style not same in table

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I created a paragraph style with numbering. It looks fine outside a table. However, if I try to apply it inside a table, the font size stays at 10 pt. (It is supposed to be 11 pt and is so if I apply this style to a paragraph outside the table.

How can I get the font size to take affect inside a table?

Thanks!!
Troy

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If you are using W2003, I sounds like you or someone specified a font settings in the table style. The fix is to redo the table style without specifying font settings (size, face, space before and after, etc.)

Pam

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Pam,
If you are talking about a Quick Table, yes, I used that, but I don’t know how to create these accept by adding an existing table. An existing table has paragraph styles applied to it.

By the way, I tried to create a table from scratch and apply these paragraph styles and I had the same result. Thus I don’t think this is the problem.

Any other ideas?

Thanks!!
Troy

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I don’t have any other ideas. I had paid absolutely no attention to quick tables until you started writing about them. I just took a look at the table styles they are based on and see that in my document they use they default settings.

Can post the table and a bit of text in the style you are trying to apply to the table text (sanitized), so we can take a look?

Pam

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Before you go to the trouble of posting a file–have you tried removing character and paragraph direct formatting by selecting the affected text and pressing Ctrl+[space] and ctrl+q? These steps will leave the underlying style. You can clear the formatting before or after you apply your style.

(The clear formatting button on the home tab also clears styles formatting and leaves the text in the normal style.)

HTH,
Pam

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Yes, I tried CTRL+SPACE. No effect. I have attached a dotx file. Let me know your thoughts.

Troy

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The table style applied to that table is Table Grid. That table style has a setting to make all the text in it 10pt. You need to either apply a different table style or modify the Table Grid style.
In Word 2007, modify the style by:
1. Put your cursor in the table
2. Go to the Design Tab on the ribbon
3. Right click the Table Grid icon (first on left) in the Table Styles group and choose ‘Modify Table Style’
4. Verify the formatting applies to ‘Whole Table’ and set the typeface size to 11pt
5. Click OK

Table styles don’t have to control the font size and by default they usually don’t. However, once you have a table style defined with a font size, it is easy to modify the font size but potentially impossible to remove the font size setting.

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Good call on the table styles!! I must admit that while this solved my issue, it raised a lot of questions on table styles:

1. You said “Table styles don’t have to control the font size and by default they usually don’t.” I have tried a couple of different ways to create table styles. This includes, right-clicking an existing table style, and clicking “New Table Style” and on the style panes, clicking the New Style button. In both cases it automatically populated the size box and I could not clear it.
2. Why is it that the setting affects the font to some styles and not others? I have other styles that use Arial that appear in 9pt as they should despite the fact that the table style has the font Times New Roman 10 pt. I tried changing the font to a font I was not using (in case the size only affected situations where the font specified was used), but that did not seem to have any affect.

Thanks!!
Troy

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Good call on the table styles!! I must admit that while this solved my issue, it raised a lot of questions on table styles:

1. You said “Table styles don’t have to control the font size and by default they usually don’t.” I have tried a couple of different ways to create table styles. This includes, right-clicking an existing table style, and clicking “New Table Style” and on the style panes, clicking the New Style button. In both cases it automatically populated the size box and I could not clear it.
2. Why is it that the setting affects the font to some styles and not others? I have other styles that use Arial that appear in 9pt as they should despite the fact that the table style has the font Times New Roman 10 pt. I tried changing the font to a font I was not using (in case the size only affected situations where the font specified was used), but that did not seem to have any affect.

Thanks!!
Troy

Actually, all built-in and new, unmodified table styles are based on table normal whose font settings are, in turn, based on the document defaults. In W2002 & 3, that means Times New Roman 12. In Word2007, it’s whatever you set the defaults to.

According to a Word team blog, the text in table normal and text in the normal paragraph are both normal, so when they each have settings different from the defaults, a conflict results that causes the types of problems many of us have seen. To get stable table styles in W2002 & 3, avoid making any font settings (face, size, and such) in the table style. In W2007, the fix (recommended by the Word team) is to leave normal “empty” that is to not change from the defaults. Both of these have worked for me. Because of the time they save, table styles are one of my favorite features.

Pam

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You would need to ask the Microsoft Engineers as to why the table styles work the way that they do. There is very odd things that happen with the overlap of table styles and paragraph styles. Generally I consider the table style settings to be similar to Character Styles – the settings you turn on in the table style CAN override the settings of the paragraph style but some settings may be left undefined and therefore take the attributes of the paragraph style.

The table styles have a hierarchy of applicability eg whole table settings are overridden by the alternate rows settings which are overridden by the first row settings which are overridden by the top left cell settings. When you look at the applicability settings for each table style, the amount of formatting information is daunting.

However, there are other inexplicable behaviours that I have no understanding of. For example, the attached document shows that the table formatting font size will override Normal paragraph style in a table IF AND ONLY IF the Normal paragraph style is either 11pt or 12pt. If you use a different font size for Normal (eg 11.5pt) then the paragraph style size wins out. Use of other paragraph styles inside tables seems to generally protect the content from override by the table style.

In my experience, table styles are great to use if you apply paragraph styles other than Normal but sometimes odd things happen that can be really hard to work out. I’m sure there is logic in there somewhere but the logic is not apparent in my limited experience.

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I never changed the default settings in the normal table style and still experienced problems. I think I did change the normal paragraph style. The behavior I have seen seems to be in line with what Andrew shared above. Table styles are a great idea, but they need to get rid of this 11pt/12pt glitch that Andrew mentioned.

Thanks!!
Troy

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I always use the Normal style for the body text and in my opinion authors have to do more work by avoiding using this built-in style in favour of an alternate ‘body text’ style. Benefits of using Normal include:
1. Every document has the style already and many styles are based on it by default
2. Pasting in content from other authors is generally full of Normal and you will need to apply a different style if you don’t use it
3. Deleting a style from a document sets all the text that used that style to Normal (and you can’t delete Normal).
4. You can’t make Normal a linked style (I’m not a fan of being able to apply a paragraph style to a part of a paragraph)

However, with the table styles problem in mind, I avoid Normal inside a table.

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I always use the Normal style for the body text and think it a short-sighted solution to avoid using this most useful style. Benefits of using Normal include:
1. Every document has the style already and many styles are based on it by default
2. Deleting a style from a document sets all the text that used that style to Normal (and you can’t delete Normal).
3. You can’t make Normal a linked style

However, with the table styles problem in mind, I avoid Normal inside a table.

It’s not that you don’t use normal, it’s that you set the font you want for your regular text in the defaults. Whatever settings are in the defaults are in Normal—unless you change them in normal.

Aside from table styles, leaving normal empty (and a couple other things) means you can use themes and the change styles settings (style sets, fonts, and in W2010 paragraph spacing).

Pam

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Ooh, sorry Pam. I just had a look back at my earlier post and realised that it could easily be perceived as too abrupt and pretentious. Sorry about that

I see what you are saying but I guess I just look at the themes and consider them to be corrupting the theory of a template. Themes are great where you are free to create documents with a range of font sets and colours. I consider themes to be very good for one-off document tasks and the wow factor is certainly a great sales tool for Microsoft.

The problem arises where multiple documents are being produced to a single standard. Themes are not so good when templates are intended to provide consistent formatting. I normally set up a template to be THE company’s ‘one and only’ look and feel. The themes are in direct conflict with this aim unless the company wants to have a different theme for departments within the company. The last thing I would be encouraging is for authors within that company to be arbitrarily changing the fonts, colours and spaces according to how they feel that day.

Another problem I see with themes is rolling them out to multiple users. If I develop a template, all I need to do to make that available is put it on the network share directory and point the users workgroup templates folder to this location. If I also require custom themes to accompany the template, then I need to copy those themes onto every PC user profile which is a much larger task especially where maintenance updates may be required.

Have you been able to work out a way to streamline the delivery of customised themes to multiple users? I have a customer where they wanted 8 different colour themes plus the ability to customise a colour theme. I chose to do this with vba code in the template but themes probably would have worked better if I had been game to use them. Now that I think about it, perhaps I could have used vba code inside the template to create and activate a theme on each machine.

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Ooh, sorry Pam. I just had a look back at my earlier post and realised that it could easily be perceived as too abrupt and pretentious. Sorry about that

Absolutely no offense taken. I just thought you misunderstood me about the use of normal. And I didn’t bring up themes and such to show that I use them regularly (I don’t), or to get us off topic. I was pointing out that the “empty normal” and default fonts are central to features other than table styles.

Pam

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Although this risks straying from the original thread topic, I just want to second Andrew’s take about the way new features like Themes and Style Sets work directly against a central requirement for a lot of organizations, which is the provision/enforcement of a consistent ‘branded’ look and feel for all documents, as provided via custom templates.

The Style Sets feature is perhaps even more dangerous than themes, because a curious user can not only with the click of a mouse wipe out the entire look and feel of a branded document that’s been created based on a custom template, but with another click of the mouse, they can save those changes back to the template itself!

Another new feature that can cause similar mischief is Insert > Cover Page. What if your organization requires a cover page, that doesn’t match any of the presets Word provides?

These features may be great for individual users who can settle for one of the preset themes Word provides, but for corporate users, and the people who provide templates for them and support those templates, these features are just a headache.

Gary

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Yep, we have really strayed from the original topic now

I haven’t used cover pages yet in a corporate template but at least they can be provided as part of the template itself. I’ve now started thinking that perhaps the template could also incorporate code to create a theme and add it as an xml doc on each users PC. I suppose this wouldn’t be that hard to implement but the problem would be getting the corporate template users to ignore some of the built-in cover pages, themes and style sets whilst using the ones provided by the template designer.

I feel like a bit of a dinosaur, longing for the old ways in Word where the template gave the entire look and there was no grey areas where other glossy features on the main screen could completely destroy the template designer’s intent.

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Thanks for the reply Pam.

I guess Gary and I are just lamenting the ways of old where we could be masters of our own (template) domain. I still prefer to fill the Normal style with anything that I want to stay consistent rather than letting it cascade its attributes from some location other than the template I am developing. I am happy for documents NOT created with a custom template to cascade the styles but I sure don’t want that to happen when I have made an effort to control the look via a custom template.

Getting back onto the table styles topic, table styles make the macros I use to format tables so much simpler and more flexible. But I still need to be careful to make sure that the table only includes non-Normal paragraph styles and ensure that the table styles have the right attributes set so that the template users aren’t tempted to modify the table style and potentially run into the problems in tables where the font is unexpected.

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