Heading row disappears from table styles when pasted table is selected

[andrewballem]

This has been annoying me for about 6 months, ever since I started a job using Word for layout a lot of the time.



I have a template with table styles defined. These styles work fine when I create new tables, and most of the time when I paste in tables from other sources.

I try to avoid using tables from others sources due to them bringing in all sorts of weird styles and re-ordering my paragraph styles, however sometimes it's the easiest way to avoid having to recreate the table (seeing as there doesn't seem to be a way to paste a table and keep the structure but strip all the formatting out: if there is, please tell me!). I usually turn on document protection, limiting styles to what's in the document, before pasting, and this keeps out the worst of it.

Anyway, sometimes when I paste in a table from somewhere else, it seems to have no header row. By this, I mean when I click on it, the header row (i.e. the first, usually coloured) row of all my table styles is missing. I can apply the table style, but it starts from row 2 of the design, not row one. If I click on a table I created from scratch, there they all are. I click on the pasted table, and all the first rows shown in the styles disappear.

The only way I can get around it is to manually style the top row. This of course mucks up any alternating fills and just in general galls me because it should not be necessary!

I've attached the file here. The first table makes the first row of the styles disappear, and the second one is one created in the document and works fine.

Thanks in advance!

Andrew

[macropod]

It seems to me all you need to do for the first table is to re-check the 'header row' option and then, perhaps, click on the 'LL 1' Table Style.

[andrewballem]

Oh boy, don't I look foolish now. I'd never even noticed those options before: I'd looked for a setting in table properties instead. It seemed like a problem that would crop up a lot and couldn't understand why no amount of googling various keywords brought up anything like it. Lots of people having trouble with the header row not repeating, but...

And look at that: previously when I wanted banded rows I'd made a table style as it was the only way I could find to achieve it: good practice, perhaps, but for the wrong reason!

Thanks so much!