editing Word table styles

Question

In recent years, Word's table styles have become somewhat useful - but tweaking a style definition remains challenging.

How can I reliably see and edit the text overrides in a table style?

Answer 1

It shouldn't be necessary to use paragraph style in creating a table style.

Creating table styles is a bit of an advanced topic. Microsoft's crummy interface doesn't help. Here's my routine:

1. Create a table.
2. Look at the Microsoft table styles on the Table Styles gallery for a design that is most similar to the style you want to create. Don't select that style or apply it to a table, but make a note of it's name.
3. At the bottom of the Table Style gallery, choose New Table Style.
4. Give the style a name.
5. Change the Style based on dropdown to the name of the similar style that you noted in step 2.
6. By default, the Apply formatting to dropdown is set to Whole table. This means that the changes you make with the controls below that dropdown will affect all cells in the table. The first row of controls sets font and language settings. The second row sets borders, cell fill color and cell text alignment. Then, under the Format button, you can set other characteristic for the whole table.
7. After the whole table is formatting the other choices on the Apply formatting to dropdown create over-rides for specific areas of the table. So you can set the header row to a different color, set the text to be white, bold and centered over the columns.
8. When you've finished setting the different table part formatting, OK out and apply the table to your sample. You new style will appear in a new Custom row above the Microsoft styles.
9. You'll probably want to tweak the style. Right-click on the icon in the Table Styles gallery and choose Modify Table Style. Your updates will automatically get applied to your sample table.
10. Using the Table Style Options, you can turn table attributes on and off, so one table style can create a variety of looks.

Like anything else in Word, the more you work with tables styles, the easier and more predictable they get.

Answer 2

In Word for Windows, text formatting in table styles should work as long as the document defaults (on the Set Defaults tab of the Manage Styles dialog box) match the corresponding settings in the Modify Style dialog box for the Normal style. (The "link" exists because of the convoluted hierarchy of styles and formatting in Word.)

Answer 3

As I was writing the above, I was thinking I need to write an article about it. I'll let you know when it's done.

Answer 4

An alternative, for some, to Table Styles, is Quick Tables.

This is a Building Blocks Gallery (although something similar could be done using AutoText on the Mac).

This is useful when creating a new table, but can't be applied to existing tables.

Answer 5

A mostly unstated rule of creating Word table styles is that the Normal style must be using the default values of that style for your current version of Word. In Microsoft 365, this means Normal style must be using the Body Theme font at 11 points with 1.08 Multiple line spacing with 0pts before and 8 points after.

Unfortunately, Microsoft made a crummy design decision by making the Normal style the default for body text in all new documents. So naturally, users modify that style to suit their preferences. Then text styles in table styles stop working and you have to manually apply text styles to style the text.

In my setup of Word, I opened Normal.dotm, made Normal style hidden, made Body Text style visible and changed the style order so Body Text appears where Normal used to. Then I format the paragraph mark of Normal.dotm to Body Text style.

After doing that, all new documents work reliably with the text styles embedded in a table style. If the table style has bold white text on a color background for the header row, then all tables produced from it will have that formatting when a header row is checked in the Table Style options.