Help me kill an infuriating formatting glitch

T

travismorien

I am trying to remove an infuriating formatting glitch from a table I
am copying from Excel to Word.

In Excel it looks like a normal table. There is no sign of any funny
formatting.

But when copied to Word the top left cell appears as a "cell within a
cell". Instead of the cell having a solid blue background, it appears
as a blue box within a larger white cell.

I've tried everything to get rid of the "cell within a cell".

I've merged and unmerged the cell. I've used the format painter to put
a correct cell onto it.

If I try to tab out of that cell it instead adds another row.

Screenshots of the table when copied into word can be seen here:

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/3175/screenshotou4.jpg
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/1434/screenshot2mp3.jpg

I've even inserted new rows a few lines after that row and manually
retyped the contents of the other cells, deleting the offending rows in
the hope of getting rid of whatever it was that was there as a final
desperation move to nuke the thing. Amazingly this didn't work either!

In Excel this looks like a perfectly normal table. There is no sign of
any weird formatting there at all.

Travis
 
T

travismorien

[email protected] said:
I've tried everything to get rid of the "cell within a cell".
Click to expand...

I'll add that its simple enough for me to fix it within Word, but
that's not the point. This is a table which is repeatedly and
frequently copied into word documents (via a special paste, link
formatted text of the named range of the table) and thus its worth
looking for a proper solution rather than having to fix the glitch
manually.

Travis
 
T

travismorien

Gary''s Student said:
In Excel, select the table and then while holding down the SHIFT key,
pull-down:

Edit > Copy Picture

The in Word, just do a paste. Not only should the format reproduce
perfectly, because you have a picture, you can move it or re-size it like any
other picture in Word.
Click to expand...

I need it to copy across as real text though. The table may need to be
edited after the links are broken.

Travis
 
E

Ed

I'm using Word and Excel 2002 - it looks like you have different versions,
so this may not apply to you. It looks like Word is seeing a separate table
set within that first cell.

What do you get if you paste as RTF?
What do you see as the text for that cell if you paste in Word as
Unformatted Text?

Are you using AutoFit row height, or a set row height? If it's set row
height, you may have another character or such that's causing the glitch in
Word. You may have to set the cell text into a string and go character by
character seeing if there's some funny ASCII or something.

This also looks like what you can get when you copy something off the Net.
Did your original Excel table come off a web page?

You mentioned links - are you trying to paste this in as an Excel object
that is linked back to the original workbook? If you do not care about a
link to the original workbook after you paste, and you have a regular layout
in Excel (no horizontal or vertical merged cells), you might try a trick I
use - I paste into Word as unformatted text, then select everything and use
Word's Convert Text to Table. This is all in a macro that also formats the
table.

You might also try posting this with the screen shots into the Word
docmanagement or newusers groups.

HTH
Ed
 
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