Not to belabor the point, but is the Adobe PDF printer set as your Windows
default printer? If it is not, then it is *not* the active printer in Word
unless you have selected it before working on the document. This is relevant
when creating documents to be printed from a different printer, but probably
not the issue in this case (since the whole idea of PDFs is to print exactly
what you would get if you printed to the default printer). Still, it is one
more conceivable factor.

In any case, you seem to be asking how to get rid of the shading at this
point. If this were one continuous table, you could just select the entire
table and remove the shading, but if this has been created as a "label" type
merge, then every sheet is going to be a separate section and hence a
separate table. A macro would make quick work of this, but unfortunately I'm
not a coder. What you might try, since you've got just 16 pages, is this.
Select the table on the first page (by clicking on the table handle in Print
Layout view), go to Format | Borders and Shading (or use the Shading Color
button on the Tables and Borders toolbar) and set the shading to No Fill.
Then set the browse object to Table, go to the next table, select it, and
press F4.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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"Lee Harris" wrote in message
...

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
Do you have that printer selected *while* you are creating the document?
For
example, in my Word I have my desktop printer (the default Windows
printer)
set as the active printer, but when I click "Convert to Adobe PDF"
presumably the Adobe PDF printer is used?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill


Hi Suzanne,
I understand that many problems are caused by overlooking obvious errors,
but please believe me that I am selecting the correct printer. I am not
using "convert to PDF", I am selecting File-Print from within word and
selecting the Adobe PDF Printer. This is the only way to create PDFs the
way
I do them. If I have the wrong printer selected, it does not come out as a
PDF file - this is not my problem, I assure you. I'd be happy to send a
trimmed down doc and/or pdf for you to see for yourself the problem.

In any case, the fix I need is just to get rid of the alternate shading on
rows within sub tables inside the cells of a very large table without
having
to rebuild the table from scratch. I'm bemused that there seems to be no
"Tools-Options-Colours" setting as per excel

cheers,
Lee