Note associated with a table of data, how to

[Tom Duprex]

Using Word 2002. I want to place note(s) at the bottom of a table that
provides additional information about a specific table item. For
example in the table I have Item *, Item2 **, with the asterisks
referring to a note below the table. I know I don't want an endnote or
a footnote here, but notes associated with this table. I'd appreciate
any suggestion as how to set this up. I somehow feel that it should be
done with Word in control like footnote/endnote but cannot find
anything addressing this. I'm reluctant to just start adding test to
the Item and losing note number relationships.


TIA

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I usually do these manually, adding the notes immediately below the table or
often in the last (merged) row of the table. FWIW, notes in tables that are
primarily numeric usually use superscript a, b, c. For other tables, the
conventional series is asterisk, dagger, double dagger, symbol mark,
paragraph mark, etc. This keeps the note reference marks down to one per
note (you can start doubling if you get to more than five, or you can add
other symbols); if you use an asterisk sequence, you could end up with half
a dozen asterisks.

 

[Tom Duprex]

Thank you Suzanne: I was going to use the last row of the table to keep
things together; I thought I would ask just to make sure Word did not
have a way to address. I'm getting spoiled by styles. I wanted to make
sure the note numbering was consistent.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Table notes are one of those things that I think we've suggested to
Microsoft (and feel free to add your vote via
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp), but I have an idea it
would probably be a low-priority item. What we are really pressing for is an
improvement of table styles. The concept of table styles is a good one, but
so far it has been so poorly implemented that we're still recommending that
people just save specimen tables as AutoText entries and use paragraph
styles for the table headings and text.