MS Word : Priority management between table and paragraph styles

Question

Within a table, some parameters can be set in both the table style and the paragraph style.

How does Word manage priorities between those conflicting settings ?

I made some tests and the rule seems to be :

Paragraph style > Table style when the parameters differs from the Normal style.

For example, if I change the police in the table style it will apply to the table. If I then change the police in the paragraph style (which has been applied to all the text inside the table), it will also apply to the table. If I then change again the police in the table style, nothing happens.

Do I get the rule right ? Did I miss something ?

I am experiencing this problem that is I cannot change the police size (but every other police parameters are fine) via the table style. Hard for me to believe that the bug would still be there years later, but with a better understanding of the internal soup it may be possible to find a workaround.

Answer 1

Seems that we're stuck with old dev choices, back in the days where object oriented thinking wasn't in the users' minds.

There is some kind of Internal Root Style (lets call it IRS) which is built-in Word and, as far as my research went, cannot be modified. Normal paragraph style inherits from him. The IRS is, for Font options :

Time New Roman, 10 pts, no options.

I will not detail other-than-font IRS format parameters but it's mostly every numeric parameter set to 0 and every tick box unchecked.

Hierarchy of styles

When formatting a text in a table, MS Word will do as follow :

• Applying IRS

• Applying Table style if it differs from IRS

• Applying Paragraph style if it differs from IRS

Side notes

1. Every options are handled separately.

2. If any Paragraph style in the style hierarchy up until the Normal style differs from the IRS, paragraph style will apply even if the final result ends up to be the same as the IRS.

3. When you apply "Bold" on an yet bold text, it goes back to normal. That exactly what happens here, so if Table style and Paragraph style says "Bold", text won't get bold. Same for "Italic", etc.

4. Tick boxes don't work as Bold-like parameters. They will be checked following the hierarchy without a look at their previous state. Most of the time that means "if it's checked somewhere, it will apply".

5. The police size "bug" comes from the fact that the Normal Paragraph Style from which every paragraph styles inherits is rarely 10 pts if you use Word default templates. See this question for details. According to 2. you will have to make heavy changes in your styles hierarchy, you can't trick the software.

Reference

This answer has been made from the tests I made after reading that thread. I will conclude with a quote from there which perfectly sums up my thoughts :

The real mistake in design, from my POV, is not being able to assign paragraph styles to parts of a table. But heh, all anyone was ever asking for before this was "personalized Table AutoFormat". Really. And that's exactly what we got! Only, now that we have it, we're not satisfied...