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Table - Cells Growing In Size If Joined
DocumentID: 605286
Revision Date: 29-Feb-96 1:31:24 PM

The information in this document applies to:
WordPerfect® 5.1 for DOS

Problem

Symptoms: Table cells are growing in size when typing text in a joined cell. For example, assume you join together rows C2 and C3. Type text into that joined cell until the cell is stretched. Then go to another column which is also joined such as A1, A2, and A3. When you begin to fill these joined cells with text, the cell begins to stretch before it reaches what appears to be the bottom. The customer would like to enter text in one cell and not have it effect the height in the row to the right or the left of it.

After you join vertical cells and type in the joined cell, how does WordPerfect 5.1 determine how much space is to be added to the first cell across from the cell that was joined? Solutions: There isn't an exact formula you can use; you have to apply the following two rules. First, as you increase the size of a cell in a row (through text or hard returns), the other cells in the row increase by the same amount. Second, a vertically joined cell will add space to the rows connected to it proportionally, trying to make all of the rows even in size.

The best way to understand this is to try the following:
1.      Create a 3 column, 3 row table
2.      Join cells A1 and B1
3.      Join cells A3 and B3
4.      Join cells C1, C2, and C3
5.      Exit Table Edit

To illustrate the first rule, place your cursor in cell A1 and type 10 lines of text. Look at the table in View Document. Notice that cell C1 has grown in size the same amount as cell A1. Go back to the table and delete all the text and hard returns out of cell A1.

To illustrate the second rule, go to cell C1 and type 14 lines of text. Cell A1 will expand on the editing screen as you type, but this is just a display problem. Now View the document; notice that all three rows have expanded in size. WordPerfect is trying to make all the rows in the table equal.

Now to illustrate both rules, clear your screen and do the following:
1.      Create a 3 column, 3 row table
2.      Join cells A1 and B1
3.      Join cells A3 and B3
4.      Join cells C1, C2, and C3
5.      Exit Table Edit
6.      Type one line of text in cell A1
7.      Type nine lines of text in cell A2
8.      Type 14 lines of text in cell A3
9.      Type 14 lines of text in cell C1

Now view the document. Notice that extra space has been added to cell A1 but not to cells A2 or A3. This is because WP is trying to make the rows in the table proportional and rows 2 and 3 don't need any extra space because they already have enough text typed in them. Space is being added to row 1 to try and make it equal in size to the other rows.

This stretching occurs because the cells (joined or not) are multi-line auto. The second cell you type in grows (stretches) to accommodate the table for uniform height so that the table looks square. Even though you have joined the row, it is still treated as three cells/rows. This is the way the program was designed to work.

One workaround is to make two separate tables and put them side by side using the Advance Up code. Size the boxes so that they butt up against each other on the sides and edit the lines so they look like one table. This way, as the second table grows, it will not effect the size of table one. After table two was all done, the customer could go into table one and set the row heights in all the rows so as to make it equal the height of table two, but no one cell would look out of place because all were set equally.

Answer:

Details:


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