Table annoyances (Word 2000)

[Russ Kidd]

I haven't worked much with the Table feature, but today I noticed a couple of things that I'm not used to. (I'm a long-time WordPerfect user who also does a fair amount of work in Word, so my point of reference is Tables in WordPerfect.)

I have a four-page document in Table format (3 columns). I was surprised to see that the last row on each page displays no bottom line (i.e., bottom border) except on the last page. Is that right? I'm used to seeing a line there.

The other issue is that I can't cursor back up through all the rows. I'll get down into the middle of the table somewhere and want to cursor back up a few rows. I'll start cursoring up, but then it's like there's an arbitrary barrier suddenly at the top of a row and the cursor won't go any farther. At that point I have to grab the mouse and use the scroll bar to continue up.

Thanks for any light you can shed.

Russ

[Dreamboat]

Sounds like you have a top border on your rows but not a bottom. The best way to fix (maybe) is to select your whole table, remove all the borders, and then reapply using the one called GRID. It's in the dropdown and looks like a 4-pane window with borders on all lines. As for the cursor thing, I can only lend this to one of two things. Either you've got a row that is formatted to be headings, and so acts like a header in that you can't put your cursor in it, or some people experience problems with tables that the screen doesn't refresh quite properly. I usually do a Ctrl+PgUp or down and then back to my page with Ctrl+PgUp or down again to *refresh* the page.

[Russ Kidd]

Wow, Dreamboat, you solved my first problem. I used the GRID option and it did the trick. I now have a bottom border on the bottom row of all pages. I had chosen the ALL option before.

Still don't know why the cursor won't go back up in the table. I've attached the document in case you or anyone else is curious. Starting from the top of the document, I hit Ctrl-PgDn. Then when I hold down the UpArrow to try to go back up from there, the cursor won't move up. No matter where I move in the document, when I then hold down the UpArrow to move back up, the cursor will not go beyond the top visible row on the screen. I have to either use the scroll bar or hit the PgUp key to move beyond that top visible row.

Thanks for the help.

Russ

[jscher2000]

Russ, the inability to scroll up (in Normal view, it does scroll in Print Layout view) is mysterious. If I convert the table to text, I get a hard page break at the top of the document. I don't understand where that is coming from. I don't think this is normal; maybe the table is corrupted.

[Dreamboat]

You are aware of the field codes in your doc? Hit Alt-F9. I just happened to have mine on when I opened your file. The usual save as RTF didn't work either.

[jscher2000]

I'm sure you meant to reply to Russ, rather than to me. I don't think there's any problem with the field codes. If I convert the table to text and immediately back again, scrolling works fine, but I lose the outline numbering. Maybe it's another of the many difficult-to-diagnose numbering bugs at work here?

[Russ Kidd]

Hi, Jefferson. It's possible the document may be corrupted. When I created it, I duped it from another document, which may have been originated in WordPerfect. So the table may have originally been a WordPerfect table, but I'm not sure.

At my firm, when we convert a document from WordPerfect to Word, our custom is to select the entire document in WordPerfect, do a Paste Special as Unformatted Text into Word, and then reconstruct everything from the ground up. But it's possible someone may have taken a shortcut and not done it that way.

An oddity: I happen to be at home today, so I opened the document in Word 98 on my Mac. There's no scrolling problem! I can scroll freely in either Normal or Page Layout.

Thanks for your usual helpful feedback.

Russ

[Russ Kidd]

Hi, Dreamboat. Yes, I know about those field codes, at least the ADVANCE codes. (That SEQ CHAPTER code in the header row is something that was already there in the document I duped. Don't know why it's there.)

I typically put those ADVANCE codes after a forward slash to allow the line to break there if necessary. I learned the technique from this forum, in fact, which is a great trick. Maybe you already know about it. If you click on Insert > Field, then double-click on Advance in the right column, a blank ADVANCE code is inserted, which permits the line to break there if necessary (like a WordPerfect Hyphenation Soft Return, if you're familiar with WordPerfect).

Thanks again for your help.

Russ