[Originally appeared 2000.]
We continue the exploration of issues relating to tables that started in issue Word of Law No 20. In Word of Law No. 21 and No. 22, the first four of the ten questions about tables were covered. The next question was:
How can a firm or other organization standardize the formatting of tables?
We are looking for the tools and techniques that will allow an organization to standardize the formatting of tables, yet allow tables to have the variations they must to support varying amounts of information or to take on the range of appearances desired for the different parts of an organization. Further, we want the table formatting solution to allow a table to change formatting to meet these needs without complex end user intervention.
To answer this question, we have taken a detour to question 8 and have begun to explore how styles interact with tables. We finished the column in Word of Law No. 22 with the suggestion that before inserting a table, the user should insert an empty paragraph in Normal style. This would cause all of the cells in the table to be in Normal paragraph style.
In Word of Law No. 22 we suggested that tables should have their own paragraph styles. To keep this strategy fairly simple, the table style or styles should have settings only for fonts. The next design decision to make is whether the font should be based on the font of the Normal style. One of the basics of Word’s style function is to permit one style to be “based on” another. This relationship is indicated in the Style Dialog in the Description box and in the Modify Style dialog, where the Based On entry is shown. These relationships can be printed, using the “Print What” selection in the lower left hand corner of the Print dialog and selecting Styles from that pull down menu. A series of styles can be chained to each other using the Based On entries. This allows a setting in the first style of the chain to modify all of the rest of the chain. For instance, by setting the font only in the first style in the chain, all the related styles can change fonts by changing the font in the first style.
For that reason, it is a good design feature for most templates to set the font in the Normal style, and use it as the first style in the chains for the other styles in the document. This permits all of the fonts in a document to be changed by changing the font of the Normal style. If the design of the document calls for the tables to have the same font as the rest of the document, tables can be created within a Normal style paragraph.
It may be desirable to have tables use a font different from the body of the document. In that case, it could be desirable to build tables based on a style not based on Normal style. It might be called Table Base. A style can start a new chain by having no entry in the Based On box.
This brief column advances the story of tables. We didn’t really address the question at the start of the column. Obviously, it will take several more columns to complete it.
This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch. Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.