[culmensis]

Hi,
can anyone tell me how to remove these marks outside a Word table (see picture)? Normally there should be only one per row, but occasionally I get a table with plenty of these outside the table and the cells contain a lot of empty space, as these marks don't allow the row to be reduced and they are not to be removed (deleted, replaced, cut, etc). What are these marks called, by the way? I found once in the help file a procedure to remove them , but now can't remember their name and without it the query brings no results.
Thanks,
Sandor

Attached Thumbnails

• 

Edited by culmensis, 21 March 2011 - 06:23 AM.

[Advertisements]

To show/hide paragraph marks:

Word 2007 - Home Tab > Paragraph area > click the back-to-front P

Word 2003 - The back-to-front P is on the Standard toolbar

[Vino Rosso]

To show/hide paragraph marks:

Word 2007 - Home Tab > Paragraph area > click the back-to-front P

Word 2003 - The back-to-front P is on the Standard toolbar

[culmensis]

Hi,
I don't want to hide them. I need to remove them. All the marks in the red rectangle should not be there. There should be only one per each row of the table.

Edited by culmensis, 21 March 2011 - 06:28 AM.

[Vino Rosso]

There maybe more rows in the table that do not have borders. Try turning on the table's grid lines.
If the grid lines show you that there are more rows in the table then that's why you have the additional marks.

[culmensis]

The grid lines are on. If there were more rows, these marks would also show *within* the cell. Note that all hidden symbols are already displayed.

[Vino Rosso]

If you tab across the row, does the cursor go as you would expect from visible cell to cell or does it tab according to the markers on the outside of the table?

[culmensis]

If you tab across the row, does the cursor go as you would expect from visible cell to cell or does it tab according to the markers on the outside of the table?

According to the outside markers. For example: 1st, 2nd, 3rd... column, marker, 1st, 2nd, 3rd... column, marker, and so on as many times as there are markers and only then it jumps to the next row.

[Vino Rosso]

OK, select one row of cells that has more than one marker outside the table, try highlighting the first cell by dragging the cursor from top to bottom of the cell (so, if there was more than one row in the cell, all rows would be highlighted) then right-click and merge cells. Repeat for all cells across the selected row.

[culmensis]

OK, select one row of cells that has more than one marker outside the table, try highlighting the first cell by dragging the cursor from top to bottom of the cell (so, if there was more than one row in the cell, all rows would be highlighted) then right-click and merge cells. Repeat for all cells across the selected row.

All it does is merge the columns. For clarification I include the picture with more or less the same table, but empty. For Word it is simply a 6 x 2 table. All grid lines and hidden symbols are displayed. When I select the row, the outside markers are not highlighted. If I drag on and go outside the table they can be highlighted together or independently of the cell markers. If only the inside or both inside and outside markers are highlighted, it is the columns that are merged. If only the outside markers are highlighted, the merge function is inactive.

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[culmensis]

If you need the real thing to practice with, here is the empty table:
My link

[Vino Rosso]

There's something very bizarre here.

The first row cannot be resized by dragging the centre line upwards.
Right-click and deleting the first row seems to delete a hidden row in the first visible row i.e. one of the markers outside the table disappears.
If you add diagonal borders to the cells in the first row, the lines do go from corner to corner so the borders only see the same row that we see... yet right-clicking and 'delete row' still seems to delete a hidden row and reduces the visible row size.
I've been playing with table properties and 'at least' row sizes but no luck.
If I create a new 6 x 2 table in Word I don't have this problem.

[culmensis]

Here is the solution found by TerFar of the Microsoft Answers forum.
You need to select the last cell in the column and all the outside markers that "belong" to this cell and then merge them. It works fine with the sample table and with all the other tables I had with the issue. Its fast, simple, efficient and doesn't require any converting.
This is something Vino Rosso has been suggesting, but at first I wasn't clever enough to experiment with what to select. Thank you! Problem solved.

Edited by culmensis, 21 March 2011 - 05:26 PM.

[Vino Rosso]

Good to hear you've got your problem resolved.