[How] do table styles work?

Question

[How] do table styles work?

Anonymous

I'm trying to define and use table styles in Word 2010, and I'm puzzled about how table styles handle fonts.

I thought I was going to learn how table fonts work by studying the behavior of various styles. I was wrong.

I started with a document in which all paragraphs were styled Normal, defined as: 11 point Arial font, left aligned, 9 points space before paragraphs, 0 points space after.

I defined a table style named EXAMPLE. I set its "Whole table" format to Times New Roman 10 point regular, center alignment, 4 points space before, 3 points space after. Border was a solid black 1-point rule for all borders. Shading is "None."

I set the "First column" format to Courier New 14 point regular, center alignment, 12 points space before, 18 points space after. Border was a dashed red 3-point rule for all borders. Shading was light green.

Finally, I set the "Header row" format to 11 point Arial, center alignment 4 points space before, 3 points space after, with 1-point solid rules and light grey background.

Then I composed a table with this style.

In columns after the first, the text was 10 point Arial. Paragraphs were centered with 9 points space before and zero after.

In the first column, text was in 14 point Arial, right aligned, with 9 points before and zero after. The background was light green. The heavy red dashed rule was applied to the left and bottom borders, but not to the top or right border (where there were adjacent cells with different border formatting) or the interior borders (where there weren't).

The header row was 14 point Arial in the first column and 10 point Arial in the rest, centered, with 9 points space before, zero after. The background was light grey.

But wait... I never defined a header row! The first row was a data row. The Table Tools / Layout ribbon confirmed that.

I tried defining the first TWO table rows as header rows. Both rows then had a light grey background. I deleted both of the rows. The old third row, now the first, acquired the grey background. Table Tools again confirmed that it was not, repeat not, a header row. Apparently Word not only applies Header row" properties to header rows -- it also applies them to the first row of a table whether it's a header row or not.

The "rules," so far as I've investigated them, seem to be: A table style's font size property is applied, but its font property is ignored, so each table cell's font defaults to the default paragraph font. The style's paragraph alignment is applied, but its space before and after paragraphs are ignored. Its background color is applied; its border properties are applied to some borders but not others.

All this seems completely random. I'd assume it's just a buggy feature, but I know that table styles\ have been in Word since at least Office 2007, and it's hard to believe Microsoft would leave bugs like these in place from one release to the next.

Can anyone explain what Word is doing?

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Anonymous

First , please do this. In your test document, go to Styles pane > Manage Styles button > Set Defaults tab. There make these settings: 11 point Arial font, left aligned, 9 points space before paragraphs, 0 points space after. When you OK out of the dialog, you should see the fonts you set in the table style.

Just a little background (revised a little from a previous post). By design and initially, the defaults, the table normal (and table grid, which is based on it) table style, and the normal paragraph style have the same font settings. So if the font size is 12 points in the defaults, it will be 12 points in table normal and in the normal paragraph style. In other words, every table you create will be in 12-point type.

If tables must appear in a different font size (or font, etc.), you can do that by 1) applying a paragraph style to the table text and not change the font settings in the table style (this is what I still do because many of the business documents I prepare must be in W2003 format and it's the only way to make table styles work in W2003) or 2) modifying table grid or creating a custom style that specifies the font size needed.

**Everything works the way I described if we change the document's regular text fonts, style sets, line spacing and such either from the change Styles icon on ribbon--as MS intends us to do for W2007-13-- or by changing the defaults manually.

But many of us learned Word when the typical/recommended way to change formatting was to modify normal. Big problems in W2007-13...because changing normal does not also change the defaults (probably for good reason) and when normal is different from the defaults, its paragraph settings override the font settings in the table styles. Even changing the font with direct formatting can fail. Read more about styles hierarchy here.

So the most important thing to know about tables is that the styles in the document must be set up for W2007-13. From there, learning table styles by doing is pretty straightforward. Another Word blog explains about table styles and conditional formatting. Please post back if you have more questions.

Pam

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4 additional answers

Answer 1

Thanks, everyone. I changed the default style to match Normal, and now it works. I never would have found that on my own, because I never heard of the default style before!

I'm still puzzled by the logic behind this. If I go to the trouble of defining and applying a table style, why would I want something called a "default" to override it? Particularly something so global that it applies to the entire document, when the parts of the table style itself override each other in increasing order of localness?

For a discussion of the "hierarchy of formatting," see http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-word/archive/2008/10/16/behind-the-curtain-styles-order-of-operations.aspx and http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-word/archive/2008/10/28/behind-the-curtain-styles-doc-defaults-style-sets-and-themes.aspx.

Answer 2

Thanks, everyone. I changed the default style to match Normal, and now it works. I never would have found that on my own, because I never heard of the default style before!

I'm still puzzled by the logic behind this. If I go to the trouble of defining and applying a table style, why would I want something called a "default" to override it? Particularly something so global that it applies to the entire document, when the parts of the table style itself override each other in increasing order of localness?

Pam, the "conditional formatting" link in your last post was malformed. It's an easily corrected typo, but some readers might not think of that. Here's the correct link.

Answer 3

Make sure that your document defaults match the settings for the Normal style; this ensures that you can specify the desired font settings in the table style. See http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-word/how-to-change-font-paragraph-spacing-in-word-2010/734052a9-df44-4694-ad63-39f4ace9d516. More specifically, see Pamelia Caswell's reply in that thread.

You change the document defaults on the Set Defaults tab of the Manage Styles dialog box. To display the dialog, click the Manage Styles icon in the Styles pane (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S).

Answer 4

Anonymous

Your best hope is to call support once and help them with reproducing the issue.

I am not sure if sending feedback for word 2010 would be of any help.

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[How] do table styles work?

4 additional answers