Is it possible to disable table styles in Word 2003?

I have my own hierarchies of paragraph and character styles that I want
to be able to use consistently and predictably both outside and inside
tables, without having to maintain a second set specifically for
tables.

The "consistently and predictably" bit is the problem. Sometimes the
font characteristics in my paragraph styles (used in tables) take
precedence; sometimes they are overridden by an unwanted table style.
Styles applied are often selectively and strangely removed from
paragraphs inside table cells when they are cut/copied and pasted
elsewhere too: sometimes the first paragraph in each cell loses its
paragraph style while others retain them; sometimes only the last
paragraph in each cell, sometimes the first and last but not
intervening paragraphs in each cell, and sometimes all paragraphs in
each cell. Occasionally all paragraphs retain their paragraph styles,
which is what I want, but this is by far the least common behaviour,
worse luck! This is all within the one document on the one machine, by
the way, and in case it's relevant, all the automatic formatting and
automatic resizing options I can find in the entire application are
disabled (I'm a control freak).

(Oh, and the multiple paragraphs per cell are necessary, as each cell
is restricted to a single logical element already. I'm not doing the
typical horrible "manually managed rows" thing within a proper table
row. So avoiding multple paragraphs per cell isn't going to help me get
around the second problem described above.)

Help!

Thanks in advance,

SF