[Jay Freedman]

And of course it was Humpty Dumpty, not the Red Queen. I hate when that happens.

On Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:58:31 -0400, Jay Freedman
wrote:

Well, you already knew that Microsoft subscribes to the Red Queen school of word
definitions. ;-)

You're correct, in Word the text does not flow from after a 'floating' object to
fill the space before it.

On Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:50:50 -0700 (PDT), grammatim
wrote:

Oh -- that's something different. In FrameMaker, when you make
something Float, it goes to the top of the next page (next column) if
it won't fit on the page its anchor is on, and the text flows around
it. Since Word isn't page-oriented, I don't expect it can do that.

On Apr 12, 11:43*am, Jay Freedman wrote:
At the risk of going somewhat off-topic:

I'd appreciate knowing how you "float" a table, which is something
built into FrameMaker but I have never discovered in Word.

The easy way: When the mouse pointer hovers over the table, a small square
containing a 4-way arrow appears off the northwest corner of the table. If you
drag that square, the table becomes a floating object.

The harder way: Go to the Table Properties dialog and click the Around button
under Text Wrapping. Also, once the table is floating, the None button in the
dialog is the only way to get it in-line again.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP * * * *FAQ:http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all
may benefit.

On Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:59:45 -0700 (PDT), grammatim
wrote:



What are you calling "very, very long"? Some people posting here say
that a 100-page document is "very, very long," but it wouldn't be
problematic in the least.

I'd appreciate knowing how you "float" a table, which is something
built into FrameMaker but I have never discovered in Word.

On Apr 12, 3:06*am, Mark Tangard ]
speakeasy.net wrote:
A user of mine will shortly build a very very long Word document with 2-column
text and many, many tables, all of them full-page-width and about one-half page
high.

I see 2 main ways to do this:

(1) Float each table, so that it displaces the text like a picture, OR:

(2) Place a section break before and after each table, make they section they
enclose a one-column layout, and have the table sit there "inline" rather than
floating.

After the file is assembled it'll be edited often, but not drastically, so ease
of editing & reformatting isn't an issue. *And I'll probably write a macro for
her to do the inserting, so the number or complexity of steps won't be much an
obstacle. We're mainly concerned with the stability of what may be a very large
file.

Given that concern, which method would you choose? *Is #2 more likely to have
problems because it'll have a large number of section breaks (which we all know
are evil incarnate)?

Also, up til now, due to bad experiences with the "positioning" feature in Word
tables long ago, I've always used frames to float tables. Is that any wiser?

Any opinions appreciated. *Word 2003, WinXP.

MT-