How to change the order of Custom Table Styles in Gallery on Design tab

Question

Hi there

I want to change the order of the tables in the Custom Table Design Menu - is this possible?

(EG: I want the three Yellow/Black tables in the below Custom Table Design Menu to appear in the first three of this layout?)

Many thanks.

Janelle

Answer 1

Good day, JanelleMcCosker.

Thanks for reaching out to our Microsoft Community Forum. Please accept our warmest regards and sincerest hope that all is well.

We understand that you'd like to customize Design tab of Word when formatting tables.

So, I tried this on my Word 2016 app, and it appears you cannot change the arrangement of the custom tables in the Design tab. I understand my version is a bit on the old side, thus can you tell me what version of Word are you using? Microsoft 365 Personal? Microsoft 365 Family? Microsoft 365 Business Standard? Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise? Office 2016? Office 2019? Office 2021? I specifically need the Product name and Version number as highlighted in the guide and photo below.

Feel free to reply to this thread if you need further clarification.

Sincerely,

Glenn Rue

Forum Moderator

Microsoft Community

Answer 2

Hi there

Thanks for your reply. I have checked and this is my version of Microsoft Office. I look forward to hearing if it is possible to change this order. Many thanks.

EDIT: Removed personally identifiable information (PII).

Answer 3

What is displayed in this Gallery are Table Styles; in your screenshot, custom Table Styles.

These may be in alphabetical order. They are in my experience.

Try renaming your Table Styles.

As far as I know, you cannot rearrange the built-in ones nor control their visibility. Someone else may know of a way to use a macro to do this. They have names with each style variations showing vertically on the left column and with color variations on them in the same row. The colors are Theme colors.

Here are resources from my website. They are for background; they do not answer your question.

• Table Styles
• Themes
• Edit Word Table Styles (question here)

Answer 4

Thank you - makes sense.

Janelle

Answer 5

As far as I know, you cannot rearrange the built-in ones nor control their visibility. Someone else may know of a way to use a macro to do this.

Hi Charles, it is possible to change the priority values for table styles by using VBA code. However, that does not appear to change the sort order for table styles on the Design tab, so it is not going to help. :-(

It is possible to change the visibility, though. Shauna Kelly has an article on that topic: https://shaunakelly.com/word/styles/how-to-hide-table-styles-in-word.html.