Word 2002 Oddities (Word 2002)

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I have recently been wrestling with Word 2002 and discovered a few odd things that someone may have come across before. Can anyone verify this behaviour or provide other leads for me to track down?

A reproducible crash when closing a Word document with a template attached if the file is displaying the Styles and Formatting Task Pane. This behaviour does not occur with very simple templates but does if the templates contain macros, autotext etc. If the task pane is closed or the template detached, the crash doesn’t occur on close and therefore can be avoided by an AutoClose macro which closes the task pane.

Odd formatting of paragraphs inside some tables such that the style inside the table is not consistent with exactly the same style outside the table. Resetting the paragraph and character styles does not cure this. The problem turned out to be table formatting applied to the table (Balloon Text and Indent) both of which caused the odd behaviour. Now I know how to fix it, does anyone know what causes this to occur?

Runaway style aliases in existing files. These style aliases result in a style name such as

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Andrew, I’m just getting up and running in Word 2002 so I’m still surfing the learning curve. However, I have seen the run away alias problem you referred to. It appeared to me that it happened everytime some direct formatting was placed on top of the style – thus the style name, plus char, etc. etc. Unfortunately, I don’t know a fix at this time. I handled it the same way you did and deleted them when I noticed them cropping up.

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Hi Andrew… I can help you with the last subject ‘runaway’ styles. As Pam (Word Witch) mentioned… Word now keeps track of direct formatting applied to a style… ‘runaway’ styles! I liked the old way of finding direct formatting (Shift+F1 – What’s This – NOW – Reveal Formatting in the Task Pane – make sure to turn on the option (at bottom of window) – Distinguish Style Source.
You may also notice that you can no longer update the style using the Style Box (making a change, clicking on the style in the Style Box – Formatting toolbar) and receiving the Modify Style dialog.

Now, back to the runaway styles… to turn this feature off and turn back on the ability to update styles using the Style Box…

Tools, Options, Edit tab – Turn OFF (uncheck) Keep track of formatting (runaway styles) and Turn ON (check) Prompt to update style.

Hope this helps! trish

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You may also notice that you can no longer update the style using the Style Box (making a change, clicking on the style in the Style Box – Formatting toolbar) and receiving the Modify Style dialog.

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In the same dialog box (Tools > Options > Edit) you can check “Prompt to update style” to get this behaviour back.

StuartR

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Thanx for your input Stuart!!! … I think I mentioned this in the next paragraph after the one which you selected. Glad to see you’re keeping me on my toes… trish

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Keeping you on your toes? It looks like I’ve fallen off mine. Thanks for your contribution.

StuartR

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Related question. (First time on this site. Should I post this elsewhere?)
I am keyboard oriented, not mouse. Now that I am using Word 2002 I find I can no longer select a style and have the style box close automatically. I used to key Alt, O, S and then select a style and the Style Window would close. Now, it stays open until I click on it. Is there a solution to this “advancement?”

Josh

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Ctrl+Shift+S activates the style dropdown list in the Formatting toolbar. You can then use the up and down arrow keys to select a style, and press Enter to confirm your choice. If you want the list to drop down, press Alt+down arrow.

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Hans,

You are a star! Many thanks.

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Hans,

You are a star! Many thanks.

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Can anyone direct me to (r provide) a comprehensive list of the standard Word shortcut keys?

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Type keyboard shortcuts in the Answer Wizard tab of the online help. There is also a very useful (and amusing) list of all Word commands with their shortcuts available from the Word MVP site: Word for Windows commands, and their descriptions, default shortcuts and menu assignments; you can download it as an Excel spreadsheet or as an Adobe PDF file.

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Type keyboard shortcuts in the Answer Wizard tab of the online help. There is also a very useful (and amusing) list of all Word commands with their shortcuts available from the Word MVP site: Word for Windows commands, and their descriptions, default shortcuts and menu assignments; you can download it as an Excel spreadsheet or as an Adobe PDF file.

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Can anyone direct me to (r provide) a comprehensive list of the standard Word shortcut keys?

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Ctrl+Shift+S activates the style dropdown list in the Formatting toolbar. You can then use the up and down arrow keys to select a style, and press Enter to confirm your choice. If you want the list to drop down, press Alt+down arrow.

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Related question. (First time on this site. Should I post this elsewhere?)
I am keyboard oriented, not mouse. Now that I am using Word 2002 I find I can no longer select a style and have the style box close automatically. I used to key Alt, O, S and then select a style and the Style Window would close. Now, it stays open until I click on it. Is there a solution to this “advancement?”

Josh

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Hi Andrew – I’ve had a few run-ins the “Char”(which I pronounce “char as in overcooked” since you have been burnt!) problem before. At first glance it looks like an alias, although it really isn’t. It’s more like a mutant style. I’ve seen it happen when someone intends to apply a paragraph style to a single paragraph and there is text selected within that paragraph. Word applies the chosen style to only the selected text. Only the character attributes of the style are applied and the style of the paragraph itself does not change. If that particular paragraph is then cut or copied to the clipboard and is pasted into a document via the clipboard task pane

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Terri

Thanks for your input. I don’t have Word 2002 on this machine so I can’t verify this immediately but you have provided a very good summary of where that problem might be coming from. We have seen it when inserting from autotext entries and this would have the same effect as a copy and paste.

In earlier versions of Word, applying a paragraph style to selected text which does not include a paragraph mark applys a character style version of the paragraph style to the selection. That it now causes Word to create a rogue style as well is a pretty serious problem in trying to control big documents where the environment isn’t bolted down very tightly.

—————— Added 2June2003———————
Well, my client has tested this now and tells me she can re-create the rogue char styles using Terri’s suggestion so that solves mystery of how they got there and how they kept getting re-introduced to cleaned files. I am guessing that a similar bug is causing the table styles to change spontaneously on tables too although I don’t have a method for reproducing this problem although it may be related to deleting a paragraph/character style from the document.

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(Edited by HansV to activate link – see Help 19)

HI Andrew,

I’ve seen pretty much the same behaviour in a document that I set up to be used by other members of staff for manual writing. I wanted to create a toolbar that would apply certain styles and run some macros. The documents were based on a template that had to be re-attached whenever the file was moved/e-mailed and I thought that it was this that was causing the runaway styles to be generated – almost as if the style existing in the document as e-mailed, but also existed in the template and re-attaching it caused duplicates to be created. This occurred, if I remember rightly, just as a result of re-attaching the template to the document, without making any other changes.

I also experienced the same crashing problem when having the styles task pane open but avoided it by closing it before closing the document!

I haven’t tweaked this file recently but, after reading the thread about Word Templates at

http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/templates.htm%5B/url%5D

which I think I got from the Lounge somewhere, I created a Global Template for the macros/toolbars etc. and a document template for the styles. This certainly made the process a whole lot more stable but I can’t remember whether it got rid of all of the problems – it’s been some time since I looked at it!

I know there aren’t necessarily any great solutions here but sometimes it helps to know that someone else has encountered exactly the same circumstances. Try the Global Template route if you haven’t already as this seemed to help when files were being moved/e-mailed/copied etc. although you may still have to re-attach the document template. The link shows how to do all of this.

HTH

Tony Simmons

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Tony

I’m glad someone else has had the crash on close with the Task Pane open too. I was amazed to discover that gem. As usual there are other factors at work here because if there is no template attached then the crash doesn’t happen and some templates (ones with no useful content) don’t show the problem.

Going to a global template is one way although with an AutoClose macro going then I can stick with just the one template and forget the add-in.

Thanks for the verification that someone else gets the same problems. I’ll do further investigations next time I’m back on a Word 2002 machine although it may be a while.

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I’d be interested to know if my analysis of the styles is correct – this drove me slightly mad for a while, having to replace and then delete the duplicate entries for styles every time I re-attached the template, without any other modifications taking place.

Good luck with your investigations – I’ll keep this thread under observation!

Tony

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Tony

I don’t think that your analysis is 100% correct as the usual behaviour for Word when the user forces an update of the styles –
1. where a style name exists in both the template and the document – the document styles are modified to match the template styles
2. where the document styles don’t exist in the template, the document style is untouched (apart from any cascading style attributes if based on a style that was modified)
3. any style in the template that doesn’t exist in the document is added to the document
This situation can get muddy where there are style aliases in a document and different styles using each alias name in the template.

What I think you were seeing was that refreshing the styles from the template was causing the (3) to occur and so you were getting new styles added to your file. You could verify this by examining your template to check the styles which it contains.

Note that the complete list of styles is tricky in Word 2002 as you can choose whether you wish to show style names in the list of styles and some existing styles may be hidden but present. A serious bug as described earlier in this thread can also arise which creates ‘char char’ style aliases that can’t be displayed in the listing either. All these hidden styles do get displayed if you save the file as RTF and then edit the file with a text editor (or use Word to open the file as a ‘Recover text’ format). Another way to display the REAL list of styles is by using a macro to create the listing.

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Its great to have search back again!

So I’m into styles etc in my work environment which is Office 2k, and I bring these templates home to use with my Office XP there, but it is a much less intensive use!

I have just spent a VERY frustrating time working in a table and totally failing to make styles stick . Unfortunately, the entire document was table, and so I did not realise that outside the table things were behaving perfectly. So there is something about styles in a table that behaves differently.

Specifically, Inside the table Word just refuses to let me specify the paragraph separation. On the same style I can reduce the before and after setting to zero, and they close up. Inside the table, I can see the same styles go to close up and then open out again on the screen.

Any ideas?

thanks

Mike C

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Mike

The first thing I would try would be to change the Table Style applied to that table. Some of the paragraph style attributes can be overridden by table style attributes. If you change the table style to one of the standard ones eg ‘Table Grid’ does the paragraph style then play the game. I am assuming you have already removed local formatting inside the table by selecting and doing Ctrl-Q and Ctrl-Space.

If you go spelunking in after selecting a table style and right clicking it in the task bar and choosing Modify you will discover that you can change the paragraph attributes of text inside that table (or particular columns, rows etc). This may be what has happened to you.

Another tip: You can see what the name of the Table Style is if you apply the Normal Paragraph Style to a paragraph inside the table and then have a look at the style box on the formatting toolbar. It shows the name of the table style not ‘Normal’ as you might reasonably expect.

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Andrew, thank you. I had spotted that “normal” inside a table was a different style, but had not thought to change that default table style. Cant check it until I get home tonight.

If there is this sense of a hierarchy of precendence (table>cell>table style>normal style or whatever) is it documented anywhere? How on earth is an upgrader to spot user interface changes like this? and indeed what happens when a table prepared one side of such a change is then worked on on the other side of it?

cheers,

Mike C

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I don’t know if it is documented anywhere. I have never gone looking as by the time I had worked out how to describe the problem correctly I had solved what the problem was.

The thing I haven’t worked out yet is how the users applied that table style in the first place but that appeared to be a endogenous function within Word when a table containing local formatting is pasted into a document (in that case from a stored Autotext entry).

It certainly gave me a new area to explore when I first started supporting Word XP users before I had used the new version. I can’t wait to see what new areas of excitement will be presented by Word 2003.

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I’ve also been disappointed by Word2002 (lots of new bugs, and a lot more crashes than I was used to from Word2000).

Re the table/style problems: It seems that you can only fix font and paragraph formatting in a table style as long as you don’t have the built-in “Normal” style (not “Table Normal”) customized.

If you have changed –say the font of — the Normal style, the formatting of Normal will take over, rather than what you have defined in the table style.

I usually apply a paragraph style in tables (“on top” of the table style) to get consistent, predictable font and paragraph formatting. Don’t know if that is the way it was supposed to work. It does seem rather messy.

Klaus

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Klaus

I always use specialised paragraph styles inside tables too. The thing is – I don’t want table styles to change my paragraph styles – I think they should change the table cell attributes and leave the text alone to be controlled by paragraph styles.

I must say that table styles are a useful new toy but there are serious bugs there. Even if I don’t use Normal paragraphs in the table, the table style can still override the paragraph formatting.

Where this becomes a problem is that the table styles can change without a user knowingly creating or applying the new table style. I have seen this with one client who stored boilerplate tables in Autotext and when they inserted the table into the document, any text inside the table became 8pt as it had a table style applied which appeared to be based on a tool tips style.

Have you seen whether Word 2003 has the same problems?

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I only just started to use Word2003. Don’t think it changed much.

Apart form the fact that the inheritance chain isn’t documented, it seems to be buggy.
If you simply create a table without manual character formatting or paragraph style applied, it will have 12 pt text, though VBA tells you that Selection.Style.Font.Size is 10 pt.

Also Ctrl+Q (ResetPara) will remove paragraph styles from a table. If you apply paragraph styles on top of table styles, and are used to remove manual paragraph formatting with Ctrl+Q, that’s a real nuisance.

I very much agree that font and paragraph formatting shouldn’t have been included in table styles at all.

Klaus

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(Edited by fburg on 18-Mar-04 23:36. take back what I said about Immediate window!)

Hi Klaus,

I think I disagree on a few points:

If you look for the Table Normal style and gets its index (it was 131 on my system), then the following in the Immediate Window
activedocument.styles(137).font.size
gave me 12 point, which matches what I’m seeing in the font size window for unchanged font usage within a table (ie, just type). In my case, my table style is based on the Table Normal style w/o further changes to the font size for the actual table style in use. As I said in a msg to Andrew a few moments ago, it doesn’t seem like you can modify this – at least not thru the Word interface (not sure about VBA).

edited: Immediate window does show 10 pt for the table normal style.

Further, isn’t reporting the style in the style box kind of similar to what’s done in a para outside a table? In a para outside a table, you get the para style name in the style box except if you’re in a char style. In a table, you get the table style name in the style box unless you’re in text whose style was changed from that in the table’s style defn.

As far as para and char formatting being included in the table style defn, it’s no diff, IMHO, than including char formatting in a para style defn. What I wish for is a way to define a para style and be able to tell Word that I don’t want to do all the clicking to define the char attributes – just go to char style y and get them from there. WOuld be nice if you could do the same for the para and char attributes in a table. But for now, the table picks up the para and char attributes from the Table Normal style. You can always define a new table style (call it Table Base) to serve as the basis for all your own other table styles and use it just to define the char and para attributes. People do that for para styles also.

Seems pretty consistent to me.

Fred

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Hi Fred,

Frankly I don’t see where we disagree, except for the consistency bit (You seem to see it as consistently good, I as consistently bad design).

edited to add
> You can always define a new table style (call it Table Base) to serve as the
> basis for all your own other table styles and use it just to define the char and
> para attributes. People do that for para styles also.

I don’t see how you can specify say the font size in the “Table Base” style, if you have changed the font size of the “Normal” style.
Change your “Normal” style to 16 pt, then try to create a “Table Base” style with font size 8 pt.
It won’t work. If you apply the “Table Base” style (plus Ctrl+Spacebar to remove manual font formatting), you’ll get 16 pt font size.
Haven’t had much luck with other kinds of formatting, either.

Klaus

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Hi Klaus,

You may be right – you usually are. I haven’t worked with Table styles much – once about 2 months ago and now this week a fair amount. Seems like you have worked with it much more than I so you may have a better basis to judge.

But I did a little more experimenting and see a little of what you mean. For example, I can create a new table style and give it a font size. But the style is based on Table Normal (no way to say base it on nothing or something that doesn’t eventually get back to Table Normal). In turn, Table Normal uses Normal. One hint of the bad news is that if you select the Normal style in the task pane and select all instances, it includes the letters in the table. So change Normal and everything changes in the table. Seems like the attributes of the table style apply only to the table structure but not the font (and I assume paragraph) attributes of text inside the table. They are based on Table Normal which is based on Normal. So you can change the font/para attributes of the table style all you want (thru Word or VBA) and it seems like nothing changes. The only way to change the font/para of the text in a table seems to be to apply direct formatting to the text in the table, which creates another formatting item. This is not the way I would design it and I guess you wouldn’t either.

So if you want to preserve a table style with char/para formating attributes, it would almost seem like you have to create an AutoText entry. But that doesn’t work either. I created an AutoText entry for my table. I changed Normal and the table changed.

Very poor. Was the person who designed table styles on something when the specs were written? I can’t believe anyone would write specs like this (assuming specs were written). Or can we blame the programmer for not following the specs? And then can we blame the alpha testers for not finding that the code didn’t follow the specs? Of course, we know the beta testers did their job and MS just didn’t take their feedback.

I played with the BaseStyle and LinkStyle attributes (eg, setting them to null for my table style) but that didn’t help.

Now we even agree on the consistency part – for the most part. I still like the idea (consistency) of having to go to the menu for Table | Insert Table… to get a non-default table style. That ain’t worth much in my book.

Fred

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Fred

I have noticed that you can create a table of a particular style if you select a table style while your cursor is sitting outside of a table. This seems like a reasonable thing to do although not immediately obvious to discover.

Hence you could easily customise a toolbar button to apply a table style and use it to create a standard table (albeit without proper paragraph styles inside the new table.

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Hi Andrew,

You’re right, not immediately obvious.

And since you can create a table within a table cell, I wonder how come you can’t click a style (or a toolbar button) to create the table within the cell. Tried it and it doesn’t work.

And if we could only get those text styles fixed.

Fred

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Hi Andrew,

You’re right, not immediately obvious.

And since you can create a table within a table cell, I wonder how come you can’t click a style (or a toolbar button) to create the table within the cell. Tried it and it doesn’t work.

And if we could only get those text styles fixed.

Fred

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Fred

I have noticed that you can create a table of a particular style if you select a table style while your cursor is sitting outside of a table. This seems like a reasonable thing to do although not immediately obvious to discover.

Hence you could easily customise a toolbar button to apply a table style and use it to create a standard table (albeit without proper paragraph styles inside the new table.

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Hi Klaus,

You may be right – you usually are. I haven’t worked with Table styles much – once about 2 months ago and now this week a fair amount. Seems like you have worked with it much more than I so you may have a better basis to judge.

But I did a little more experimenting and see a little of what you mean. For example, I can create a new table style and give it a font size. But the style is based on Table Normal (no way to say base it on nothing or something that doesn’t eventually get back to Table Normal). In turn, Table Normal uses Normal. One hint of the bad news is that if you select the Normal style in the task pane and select all instances, it includes the letters in the table. So change Normal and everything changes in the table. Seems like the attributes of the table style apply only to the table structure but not the font (and I assume paragraph) attributes of text inside the table. They are based on Table Normal which is based on Normal. So you can change the font/para attributes of the table style all you want (thru Word or VBA) and it seems like nothing changes. The only way to change the font/para of the text in a table seems to be to apply direct formatting to the text in the table, which creates another formatting item. This is not the way I would design it and I guess you wouldn’t either.

So if you want to preserve a table style with char/para formating attributes, it would almost seem like you have to create an AutoText entry. But that doesn’t work either. I created an AutoText entry for my table. I changed Normal and the table changed.

Very poor. Was the person who designed table styles on something when the specs were written? I can’t believe anyone would write specs like this (assuming specs were written). Or can we blame the programmer for not following the specs? And then can we blame the alpha testers for not finding that the code didn’t follow the specs? Of course, we know the beta testers did their job and MS just didn’t take their feedback.

I played with the BaseStyle and LinkStyle attributes (eg, setting them to null for my table style) but that didn’t help.

Now we even agree on the consistency part – for the most part. I still like the idea (consistency) of having to go to the menu for Table | Insert Table… to get a non-default table style. That ain’t worth much in my book.

Fred

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Hi Fred,

Frankly I don’t see where we disagree, except for the consistency bit (You seem to see it as consistently good, I as consistently bad design).

edited to add
> You can always define a new table style (call it Table Base) to serve as the
> basis for all your own other table styles and use it just to define the char and
> para attributes. People do that for para styles also.

I don’t see how you can specify say the font size in the “Table Base” style, if you have changed the font size of the “Normal” style.
Change your “Normal” style to 16 pt, then try to create a “Table Base” style with font size 8 pt.
It won’t work. If you apply the “Table Base” style (plus Ctrl+Spacebar to remove manual font formatting), you’ll get 16 pt font size.
Haven’t had much luck with other kinds of formatting, either.

Klaus

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(Edited by fburg on 18-Mar-04 23:36. take back what I said about Immediate window!)

Hi Klaus,

I think I disagree on a few points:

If you look for the Table Normal style and gets its index (it was 131 on my system), then the following in the Immediate Window
activedocument.styles(137).font.size
gave me 12 point, which matches what I’m seeing in the font size window for unchanged font usage within a table (ie, just type). In my case, my table style is based on the Table Normal style w/o further changes to the font size for the actual table style in use. As I said in a msg to Andrew a few moments ago, it doesn’t seem like you can modify this – at least not thru the Word interface (not sure about VBA).

edited: Immediate window does show 10 pt for the table normal style.

Further, isn’t reporting the style in the style box kind of similar to what’s done in a para outside a table? In a para outside a table, you get the para style name in the style box except if you’re in a char style. In a table, you get the table style name in the style box unless you’re in text whose style was changed from that in the table’s style defn.

As far as para and char formatting being included in the table style defn, it’s no diff, IMHO, than including char formatting in a para style defn. What I wish for is a way to define a para style and be able to tell Word that I don’t want to do all the clicking to define the char attributes – just go to char style y and get them from there. WOuld be nice if you could do the same for the para and char attributes in a table. But for now, the table picks up the para and char attributes from the Table Normal style. You can always define a new table style (call it Table Base) to serve as the basis for all your own other table styles and use it just to define the char and para attributes. People do that for para styles also.

Seems pretty consistent to me.

Fred

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I only just started to use Word2003. Don’t think it changed much.

Apart form the fact that the inheritance chain isn’t documented, it seems to be buggy.
If you simply create a table without manual character formatting or paragraph style applied, it will have 12 pt text, though VBA tells you that Selection.Style.Font.Size is 10 pt.

Also Ctrl+Q (ResetPara) will remove paragraph styles from a table. If you apply paragraph styles on top of table styles, and are used to remove manual paragraph formatting with Ctrl+Q, that’s a real nuisance.

I very much agree that font and paragraph formatting shouldn’t have been included in table styles at all.

Klaus

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Hi Andrew –

Just hit on this note about the problem with table styles when you use Autotext entries in XP. I posted elsewhere about table behavior problems on another co-worker’s machine and this is exactly our environment. We use tables with paragraph styles stored in Autotext entries . I assume that this problem seems intermittent because she is working on lots of stable documents and not adding new tables. I suspect that the problem happens when she inserts a new blank table from Autotext. Does that make sense?

My problem is that I don’t have XP and she lives on the other side of town. I can’t troubleshoot it and determine the best course. I’ve sent her a note to check for table styles using your technique, but now I’m sure that’s what she’ll find.

How do you handle this now? Are you still using tables in Autotext? What can I change so that our Table Text paragraph style doesn’t get whacked each time she inserts a table? Will I be able to change anything from the 2000 side, or will I have to go to her machine?

Right now, I’m just opening and saving each document in 2000 and sending them back. I’m sure that removes the table styles since they aren’t supported in 2000. But now it seems it is going to happen every time she inserts a new table.

Thanks!
Bob

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Bob

I haven’t changed my own work methods at all and I don’t get problems in files that only I use … But I have seen plenty of files that I am asked to clean up. Just yesterday I looked at a file with several problems all related to much the same thing.

My suggestions for anyone getting these problems in Word XP is:
1. Don’t track formatting of styles ie Uncheck the tick in Tools > Options > Edit > Keep Track of Formatting
2. Redefine some table styles in your template to apply table formatting as per your own standard – see notes below
3. Keep an eye out for style aliases – use a macro to kill them when you see them to stop the Char Char dancing styles from getting out of control
4. Avoid local formatting as far as possible especially don’t put tables into autotext with any local formatting whatsoever (ie select and Ctrl-Q and Ctrl-Space to be sure)

Note 1: I haven’t found how to create a NEW table style yet so I content myself with modifying existing ones.
Note 2: Table styles are more powerful than you might initially realise so it might take a while to develop and test. For some reason they don’t include paragraph styles in the definitions but they can apply character formatting which overrides paragraph and character formatting (including styles) applied directly.
Note 3: I am not convinced yet that Word 2000 doesn’t have (unimplemented) Table Styles – The table style names in Word XP bear a striking resemblance to the Table Autoformat names in Word 2000

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Andrew,

Creating a new table style: in Style and Formatting pane, click new. In New Dialog, choose type of style=table. I tried it for first time a few days ago. Very cool. Key strategy is to apply format for whole table first and then do special items (first row, upper left cell, etc) afterward. If you apply a special format to, say, last row and you keep adding rows, then what was the last row changes format to rest of table and new last row takes on your “last row” format.

You’re right about the Table AutoFormat in 2000 and Table Styles in XP. I think a diff is that TAF did not allow you to change the format defn but the Table Styles can be changed. The initial set of Table Styles are the AutoFormat versions (for the most part). Once you have a table style, you can go into the Style and Formatting task pane and click a Table Style (one of your own or a predefined one) and modify it – just like any other style. You get a modify dialog that allows you to modify char and para attributes, plus other ones as well (a new attribute for stripes is very cool too). But if you apply “direct formatting” to a table cell, XP doesn’t create a formatting entry of “Table Style x + y” for that. Think of defining the char and para formatting attributes in a table like defining the char attributes in a para style – you have to do it manually even if you have a style fully defined that you’d like to use as a basis.

Creating a table is like creating a new document. If you use the toolbar icon, you get a table using the Table Grid style (just a plain table with all borders so maybe it should have been called Talbe Borders instead) as the default. If you want a particular table format/style, you have to go into the Table menu, click Insert table, and go thru the dialog. It is here where you can choose your table format/style by clicking on the AutoFormat button (probably not a great name).

There is also a style called Table Normal, which is a table with no special effects and no borders (shades of Word 95). Seems like other Table Styles are based on this. It seems you can’t modify the style defn for Table Normal. Maybe this has the char and para attributes.

Fred

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Andrew,

Creating a new table style: in Style and Formatting pane, click new. In New Dialog, choose type of style=table. I tried it for first time a few days ago. Very cool. Key strategy is to apply format for whole table first and then do special items (first row, upper left cell, etc) afterward. If you apply a special format to, say, last row and you keep adding rows, then what was the last row changes format to rest of table and new last row takes on your “last row” format.

You’re right about the Table AutoFormat in 2000 and Table Styles in XP. I think a diff is that TAF did not allow you to change the format defn but the Table Styles can be changed. The initial set of Table Styles are the AutoFormat versions (for the most part). Once you have a table style, you can go into the Style and Formatting task pane and click a Table Style (one of your own or a predefined one) and modify it – just like any other style. You get a modify dialog that allows you to modify char and para attributes, plus other ones as well (a new attribute for stripes is very cool too). But if you apply “direct formatting” to a table cell, XP doesn’t create a formatting entry of “Table Style x + y” for that. Think of defining the char and para formatting attributes in a table like defining the char attributes in a para style – you have to do it manually even if you have a style fully defined that you’d like to use as a basis.

Creating a table is like creating a new document. If you use the toolbar icon, you get a table using the Table Grid style (just a plain table with all borders so maybe it should have been called Talbe Borders instead) as the default. If you want a particular table format/style, you have to go into the Table menu, click Insert table, and go thru the dialog. It is here where you can choose your table format/style by clicking on the AutoFormat button (probably not a great name).

There is also a style called Table Normal, which is a table with no special effects and no borders (shades of Word 95). Seems like other Table Styles are based on this. It seems you can’t modify the style defn for Table Normal. Maybe this has the char and para attributes.

Fred

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Bob

I haven’t changed my own work methods at all and I don’t get problems in files that only I use … But I have seen plenty of files that I am asked to clean up. Just yesterday I looked at a file with several problems all related to much the same thing.

My suggestions for anyone getting these problems in Word XP is:
1. Don’t track formatting of styles ie Uncheck the tick in Tools > Options > Edit > Keep Track of Formatting
2. Redefine some table styles in your template to apply table formatting as per your own standard – see notes below
3. Keep an eye out for style aliases – use a macro to kill them when you see them to stop the Char Char dancing styles from getting out of control
4. Avoid local formatting as far as possible especially don’t put tables into autotext with any local formatting whatsoever (ie select and Ctrl-Q and Ctrl-Space to be sure)

Note 1: I haven’t found how to create a NEW table style yet so I content myself with modifying existing ones.
Note 2: Table styles are more powerful than you might initially realise so it might take a while to develop and test. For some reason they don’t include paragraph styles in the definitions but they can apply character formatting which overrides paragraph and character formatting (including styles) applied directly.
Note 3: I am not convinced yet that Word 2000 doesn’t have (unimplemented) Table Styles – The table style names in Word XP bear a striking resemblance to the Table Autoformat names in Word 2000

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Hi Andrew –

Just hit on this note about the problem with table styles when you use Autotext entries in XP. I posted elsewhere about table behavior problems on another co-worker’s machine and this is exactly our environment. We use tables with paragraph styles stored in Autotext entries . I assume that this problem seems intermittent because she is working on lots of stable documents and not adding new tables. I suspect that the problem happens when she inserts a new blank table from Autotext. Does that make sense?

My problem is that I don’t have XP and she lives on the other side of town. I can’t troubleshoot it and determine the best course. I’ve sent her a note to check for table styles using your technique, but now I’m sure that’s what she’ll find.

How do you handle this now? Are you still using tables in Autotext? What can I change so that our Table Text paragraph style doesn’t get whacked each time she inserts a table? Will I be able to change anything from the 2000 side, or will I have to go to her machine?

Right now, I’m just opening and saving each document in 2000 and sending them back. I’m sure that removes the table styles since they aren’t supported in 2000. But now it seems it is going to happen every time she inserts a new table.

Thanks!
Bob

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Klaus

I always use specialised paragraph styles inside tables too. The thing is – I don’t want table styles to change my paragraph styles – I think they should change the table cell attributes and leave the text alone to be controlled by paragraph styles.

I must say that table styles are a useful new toy but there are serious bugs there. Even if I don’t use Normal paragraphs in the table, the table style can still override the paragraph formatting.

Where this becomes a problem is that the table styles can change without a user knowingly creating or applying the new table style. I have seen this with one client who stored boilerplate tables in Autotext and when they inserted the table into the document, any text inside the table became 8pt as it had a table style applied which appeared to be based on a tool tips style.

Have you seen whether Word 2003 has the same problems?

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I’ve also been disappointed by Word2002 (lots of new bugs, and a lot more crashes than I was used to from Word2000).

Re the table/style problems: It seems that you can only fix font and paragraph formatting in a table style as long as you don’t have the built-in “Normal” style (not “Table Normal”) customized.

If you have changed –say the font of — the Normal style, the formatting of Normal will take over, rather than what you have defined in the table style.

I usually apply a paragraph style in tables (“on top” of the table style) to get consistent, predictable font and paragraph formatting. Don’t know if that is the way it was supposed to work. It does seem rather messy.

Klaus

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I don’t know if it is documented anywhere. I have never gone looking as by the time I had worked out how to describe the problem correctly I had solved what the problem was.

The thing I haven’t worked out yet is how the users applied that table style in the first place but that appeared to be a endogenous function within Word when a table containing local formatting is pasted into a document (in that case from a stored Autotext entry).

It certainly gave me a new area to explore when I first started supporting Word XP users before I had used the new version. I can’t wait to see what new areas of excitement will be presented by Word 2003.

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Andrew, thank you. I had spotted that “normal” inside a table was a different style, but had not thought to change that default table style. Cant check it until I get home tonight.

If there is this sense of a hierarchy of precendence (table>cell>table style>normal style or whatever) is it documented anywhere? How on earth is an upgrader to spot user interface changes like this? and indeed what happens when a table prepared one side of such a change is then worked on on the other side of it?

cheers,

Mike C

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Andrew,

Thanks, you got it in one.

Paragraph spacing is clearly one of the characteristics where the underlying table style takes priority over the specific paragraph style. Change that and you are back in control up to the limits in the table style.

Cheers,

Mike C

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Andrew,

Thanks, you got it in one.

Paragraph spacing is clearly one of the characteristics where the underlying table style takes priority over the specific paragraph style. Change that and you are back in control up to the limits in the table style.

Cheers,

Mike C

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Mike

The first thing I would try would be to change the Table Style applied to that table. Some of the paragraph style attributes can be overridden by table style attributes. If you change the table style to one of the standard ones eg ‘Table Grid’ does the paragraph style then play the game. I am assuming you have already removed local formatting inside the table by selecting and doing Ctrl-Q and Ctrl-Space.

If you go spelunking in after selecting a table style and right clicking it in the task bar and choosing Modify you will discover that you can change the paragraph attributes of text inside that table (or particular columns, rows etc). This may be what has happened to you.

Another tip: You can see what the name of the Table Style is if you apply the Normal Paragraph Style to a paragraph inside the table and then have a look at the style box on the formatting toolbar. It shows the name of the table style not ‘Normal’ as you might reasonably expect.

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Hi Andrew. I am having the “reproducible crash” that you described when closing a Word document if the “Styles and Formatting Task Panel” is visible. I was wondering if you ever found out the cause of this, or do you still use the “AutoClose” macro to close the task pane?

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I haven’t encountered the problem for a long time and only really experienced it at one client site – so I’m sure it must have been due to something fixable. The same templates on my own machines didn’t cause the problem.

I’m using Word 2003 nowdays and haven’t seen it at all on this version.

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