Hi,

My work has asked me to revamp their Word template for minutes, mainly on getting rid of the tables for being a pain in the behind.

The problem is they want me to format the text to look the same, and with my limited Word skills, I can't find a way to do that more efficiently than the tables. I tried to set it up with tabs, but I don't know of a way to "wrap" the text line like in a table beyond manually going to the next line with shift + enter which gets annoying when the text is being edited and changed.

Is my boss's request possible or will we either have to revamp the design completely or settle for tables? I'm not too worried about disappointing her because she knows that I'm just a youngster, not a Word expert.

Thank you in advance!



Noah

Attached Images

	Tabled.PNG (10.7 KB, 12 views)
	Attempted Non Tabled.PNG (12.5 KB, 11 views)

First, does the person who wants you to eliminate tables realize that you can have borderless tables?
What is the reason for eliminating them?

• 4. Use Tables and Tabs to Arrange Text in Microsoft Word
• Tables

To proceed, you are going to want to look at styles, because you will want to use them to consistently format text.

• The Importance of Styles in Microsoft Word

You can get a temporary right wrap point for your text with a right-indent in the paragraph formatting, preferably in the paragraph style.

• Indents

Hi Charles,

We do use borderless tables, I just shared the photo with the borders so you could see the set-up of the table. Our hopes in switching from tables to regular text is that we won't have to "battle" the table. Moving entries, copy-pasting externally, and formatting (line spacing mainly), is easier with regular text. In our opinion anyway.

I'll return if the articles you shared don't help any. Thank you for your time!

Sincerely,


Noah

You can set paragraph styles to have any paragraph formatting you want, including line spacing, indents, and even Frames. You will have a very difficult time having parallel columns of text without using tables, though.

I think judicious use of tables is what is required.

In your example under Proclamations, a table is the most efficient way to do this. You could use a frame for the right side text but in my opinion that is more complicated than a table.

In your example under Minutes I would have to say that the left column should NOT be three separate rows. That adds complications for no reason. The right column has no content so potentially that part doesn't need to be a table at all unless you want something in the right column.

If you are using merged cells, tables can be complicated to copy/paste content but they have real advantages for some layouts so getting rid of them completely is not going to make your life easier.

__________________
Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Thank you for the advice. I believe the three different rows are from being the next paragraph. I understand using a line break instead would avoid this but are you able to do line spacing between line breaks? Or is there a way to insert a new paragraph without making a new line?

Thank you for your patience.

Line spacing is a paragraph setting and applies to line breaks within the paragraph.
Insert a new paragraph without making a new line?

• Style Separator
• Frames Frames and Textboxes in Microsoft Word

Again, editing anything like this without the table format is going to be a real headache.

Ah sorry I mean paragraph spacing, not line spacing.

I have a lot of advice now and I think we will stick with the tables for now.

I am open to more advice always, but the beef of my original question has been answered.

Thank you everyone for your help!