Table Styles changing by themselves

[Loretta]

Word 2003, Windows XP

We have some large technical documents that had previously been created
and/or edited by a combination of people who sortof knew what they were
doing, and people who didn’t (hopefully I’m in the former group), so there
are numerous Styles with odd names, and LOTS of manual formatting. I’m in
the process of developing and implementing a set of consistent Styles to use
on the documents.

I’m importing and applying the new Styles, wiping out the manual formatting,
and deleting the old, oddball styles. I’m using Table Styles to do things
like set the internal and external borders, setting the spacing between
cells, and centering/not centering the whole table.

As I’m cleaning things up, I apply the Table Styles to the table, and
font/paragraph Styles to the text within. I’ll go along to later parts of
the document, and when I finally wipe out all instances of an oddball Style,
I delete it using the “Styles and Formatting†pane. Later I’m looking
through the document and notice that the tables now have applied as a Table
Style, a style that isn’t necessarily a Table Style, and typically has no
relation to the Styles I’ve applied to the text.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Loretta,

I think you've run into a bug that I encountered, too. And I avoid table styles for professional work because of this bug.

The only thing I've figured out is that the table style is messed up the moment I deleted some other, totally unrelated (paragraph) style. And the problem seems to be related to "link styles".

I've had to reformat dozens of tables by hand last time it happened.

Since then, I double-check if the tables are still ok each time after I delete some style, and use "undo" (Ctrl+Z) immediately if the tables are messed up.

If it's too late and the tables are already messed up, and if you're lucky, you can perhaps fix the damage -- although I haven't had much luck yet:
In the VBA editor (Alt+F11), immediate window (Ctrl+G), find the link styles for your table style and the style that's suddenly applied:
? ActiveDocument.Styles("your_Table_Style").LinkStyle
(type or paste this line, insert the name of your table style, and hit the Return key at the end of the line)

You should get the answer "Normal" both times.

If it turns out that the table style and the new, wrong style are linked, try to get rid of the link between the styles:
ActiveDocument.Styles("wrong_style").LinkStyle=ActiveDocument.Styles(wdStyleNormal)
or
ActiveDocument.Styles("your_Table_Style").LinkStyle=ActiveDocument.Styles(wdStyleNormal)

One of those two lines might fix the problem.

It's a very slim chance that this might work... Probably you'll have to reformat :-(

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Loretta]

Don't ya just love them bugs? <G>

I'll have to try your suggestions. I have noticed that if I reapply the
proper table style to the table, everything goes back to what it was
_supposed_ to look like.