Moving the last paragraph in a table cell

New Daddy
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Moving the last paragraph in a table cell

Post by New Daddy »

[Word 2003]

I just want to double-confirm: You can't cut or move the last paragraph in a table cell, because the paragraph mark immediately following the last paragraph in a cell represents the whole cell, not the last paragraph, right? Is there any getting around this? It's very limiting. Maybe Word should have two editing marks - one for the last paragraph of a table cell and another for the cell itself.

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Jay Freedman
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Re: Moving the last paragraph in a table cell

Post by Jay Freedman »

That's not correct, although you might be (reasonably) confused about what constitutes the "last paragraph". If you turn on nonprinting marks by clicking the ¶ button, you might see that the last text in the cell ends with a cell marker, or there might be a paragraph mark and then a cell marker:
Image

If there's a paragraph mark, then you can move or cut that paragraph the same as you would any other paragraph.

If there's just a cell marker, you can select the text, press Shift+left arrow to deselect the cell marker, and then move or cut just the text that remains selected. If you want it to remain a separate paragraph wherever you paste it, you'll have to press Enter to insert a paragraph mark at the destination.

New Daddy
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Re: Moving the last paragraph in a table cell

Post by New Daddy »

Jay Freedman wrote:That's not correct, although you might be (reasonably) confused about what constitutes the "last paragraph". If you turn on nonprinting marks by clicking the ¶ button, you might see that the last text in the cell ends with a cell marker, or there might be a paragraph mark and then a cell marker:
Image

If there's a paragraph mark, then you can move or cut that paragraph the same as you would any other paragraph.

If there's just a cell marker, you can select the text, press Shift+left arrow to deselect the cell marker, and then move or cut just the text that remains selected. If you want it to remain a separate paragraph wherever you paste it, you'll have to press Enter to insert a paragraph mark at the destination.
Well, first of all, cell markers and paragraph markers look the same in Word 2003.

Regardless, can you move the "second" and "third" paragraph in your example along with the paragraph properties? You can move just the text, but I don't think you can include the paragraph properties of your second and third paragraphs, because they don't have their own paragraph markers.

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HansV
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Re: Moving the last paragraph in a table cell

Post by HansV »

Again, that's not correct. End-of-cell markers and end-of-paragraph markers are different from each other in ALL versions of Word, including Word 2003.

If you copy the contents of the cell with "second" (or "third"), including the end-of-cell marker, and paste it elsewhere, you'll copy the paragraph formatting too.
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Hans

New Daddy
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Re: Moving the last paragraph in a table cell

Post by New Daddy »

HansV wrote:Again, that's not correct. End-of-cell markers and end-of-paragraph markers are different from each other in ALL versions of Word, including Word 2003.

If you copy the contents of the cell with "second" (or "third"), including the end-of-cell marker, and paste it elsewhere, you'll copy the paragraph formatting too.
Ok.. I should have clarified. In the particular example you created, yes, it works as you described.

Can you add one more non-empty paragraph to the beginning of the second and third cells? Now, when there are two or more paragraph in a cell, can you still cut only the last paragraph of a cell, including the paragraph properties, by including the cell marker?

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HansV
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Re: Moving the last paragraph in a table cell

Post by HansV »

No, because if you include the end-of-cell marker, you select the entire cell.
You can do it in two steps, however:

1) Select the last paragraph in the cell, excluding the cell marker, and copy / paste it to another location.
2) Click anywhere in the paragraph that you copied and press Ctrl+Shift+C, then click in the paragraph that you pasted and press Ctrl+Shift+V.

Ctrl+Shift+C copies the paragraph formatting of the current selection to the clipboard.
Ctrl+Shift+V pastes the paragraph formatting from the clipboard to the current selection.
Best wishes,
Hans

New Daddy
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Re: Moving the last paragraph in a table cell

Post by New Daddy »

HansV wrote:No, because if you include the end-of-cell marker, you select the entire cell.
You can do it in two steps, however:

1) Select the last paragraph in the cell, excluding the cell marker, and copy / paste it to another location.
2) Click anywhere in the paragraph that you copied and press Ctrl+Shift+C, then click in the paragraph that you pasted and press Ctrl+Shift+V.

Ctrl+Shift+C copies the paragraph formatting of the current selection to the clipboard.
Ctrl+Shift+V pastes the paragraph formatting from the clipboard to the current selection.
Thanks for the confirmation. Yes, that's what I've been doing and I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out on a better method.
As I mentioned, this is very cumbersome. I wonder if not enough people have felt off-put by this to make MS come up with a better solution. Definitely one of Word's worst limitations in my book.

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Jay Freedman
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Re: Moving the last paragraph in a table cell

Post by Jay Freedman »

An alternative -- still two steps, but not as many moves back and forth -- is to put the cursor between the last text character and the cell marker, and press Enter to insert a paragraph mark there. Then you can copy or cut the paragraph without selecting the cell marker and thus the rest of the cell content.

If you're copying, you can then delete the inserted paragraph mark from the original cell. If you're cutting, you don't need to do anything extra.

As for "worst limitations," everybody has their own favorite, depending on what kinds of things they do most often. My pet peeve is how poorly VBA supports built-in dialogs and, in later versions, the functions that are moved to task panes and the Backstage.

New Daddy
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Re: Moving the last paragraph in a table cell

Post by New Daddy »

Jay Freedman wrote:An alternative -- still two steps, but not as many moves back and forth -- is to put the cursor between the last text character and the cell marker, and press Enter to insert a paragraph mark there. Then you can copy or cut the paragraph without selecting the cell marker and thus the rest of the cell content.

If you're copying, you can then delete the inserted paragraph mark from the original cell. If you're cutting, you don't need to do anything extra.

As for "worst limitations," everybody has their own favorite, depending on what kinds of things they do most often. My pet peeve is how poorly VBA supports built-in dialogs and, in later versions, the functions that are moved to task panes and the Backstage.
We are simplifying things in the example, but it's usually more than two steps however you do it.

When you cut a (non-table) paragraph with the paragraph mark, it does not affect the paragraph properties of another paragraph. It's clean-cut, so to speak. But in a table cell, because you can't cut the paragraph mark(-cum-cell-mark), the paragraph (character) properties remain at the end of a cell. Now, if you delete the last "ghost" paragraph to make the bottom of the cell contents flush with the lower boundary of the cell, it will engulf the preceding paragraph and change its properties. If all paragraphs in a cell are formatted the same, this is not a problem. But if the preceding para had different properties than the last para, you have more work cut out for you. Definitely more than two steps however you do it.

I've run into many situations where the last paragraph of a cell had a life of its own and I couldn't control it..