This article was written some time ago (May 2001), by three authors
collaborating, so I may not be able to come up with our exact reasoning on
this.* I suspect, however, that the idea might have been backward
compatibility. If you wrap a table in Word 2000 or above and open the
document in Word 97 or earlier, the table appears in a frame (you can't wrap
tables in Word 97 and earlier). Furthermore, it is not always obvious that
tables are wrapped; putting them in a frame gives them a hashed border that
makes this quite evident. These are just guesses, though, and it's possible
that the idea of wrapped tables was so new that we just didn't think of it
(much as many users put graphics in text boxes in order to "float" them,
even though you can now wrap graphics themselves); I know I was still
working in Word 97 at the time, so it wouldn't have occurred to me.
As for Alt, dragging a wrapped object with Alt pressed overrides the grid
and allows you to place it more exactly.
*I've looked at the correspondence that went back and forth when this
article was being developed (several dozen exchanges), and I find the
following (from me to Bill Coan): "Dave was convinced that a table in a
frame was far superior to a text box (you can't use StyleRef fields in a
text box, for one thing), and so he and I worked out the procedure for that
and added it." In fact, Dave's original suggestion was a frame instead of a
text box, and then he remembered that this wouldn't support text direction
(though in fact we later found that it does--another big surprise) so added
the table idea. At any rate, here's what I wrote about the table concept:
"Although Q162235 does describe a Table Method, it does not use a frame. It
instead uses Draw Table to draw a table in the margin, which is an
interesting concept for Word 97 (since it predates the floating tables of
Word 2000). This is indeed a very interesting method, but it's so weird that
I wonder about stability. It starts by entering a negative value for the top
margin, which extends the header to cover the whole page, down to the top of
the footer, so that the table in the margin is nominally in the header
(though there's no anchor), yet the document area remains unchanged. Wild!"
There was a lot of back-and-forth discussion, and this was one of my replies
to Dave:
"But if you draw the table, you can put it anywhere, and this is not
reflected in the table properties AFAICS. For example, I made a table that
was aligned the same way I had the text box--between the top and bottom
margins.
I think let's not try to address the table-in-margin idea EXCEPT using a
frame. Somewhere in the article, have a reference to the fact that tables
can be used, with a link to the KB article. Anyone who wants to explore that
further can find the step-by-step instructions there, as we did.
As for creating the table and then inserting the frame, you come back to
Start, where you have to use Draw Table to get a table in the margin to
begin with (unless you want to give step-by-step instructions on how to
create the damn thing using the table properties; or maybe you were thinking
of creating it in the header and then moving it?). I have essentially zero
experience with Draw Table (I've dealt with some users who got into deep
doo-doo very quickly using it), so I guess this just doesn't come as
naturally to me as a text box (though I find even those hard to deal with).
If you WERE creating the table in the header, framing it, and then moving
it, the problem is that the header becomes practically page depth, which
would be pretty scary to the newbies we're trying to target. Or do you
create a LITTLE table, frame it, move it, and THEN set the properties for
the exact cell height and width?"
There was considerable more discussion of this, but in the end the decision
was made to omit in-depth discussion of unframed tables.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site:
http://word.mvps.org
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"Joseph N." wrote in message
...
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 00:25:03 GMT, Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
How can I create a landscape section and still have a portrait
page number?
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting...apeSection.htm
I consulted this page, and have a couple of questions about it all:
1. Why is a frame needed around the table? At least in Word 2002, why
not just a table? I read the part about text wrapping involving an
invisible frame, but, if the point is just a page number with limited text,
then why would wrapping even be necessary? I tested this by simply drawing
a table, changing the text orientation, and inserting a PAGE field. Worked
fine. What's missing?
2. What does holding down ALT do when repositioning a frame?
--
JN
jbn 'won'oh'won'six'won' at fastmail.fm
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