Tables in Word losing their padding

[jlemon]

The tables in my Word output are losing their padding.
Here is an example.

Table-Word.gif

This is not the case in my WebHelp and PDF versions, as shown here.

Table-PDF.gif

Is there a simple way to solve this problem?
As always, thank you in advance for your assistance.
-John

[jlemon]

And one more thing...
Can someone explain why Word adds the extra paragraphs above and below my tables?
Is it Word's way to create the necessary spacing?
Thanks again,
-John

[doc_guy]

Word doesn't like the padding attribute. It doesn't translate, and I don't know of a way to do it, except doing it manually in Word after you create your build. (One of many reasons not to create Word output if you can get away with it.)

[doc_guy]

As for the extra space, I've never noticed that. That seems weird to me. I suppose you're sure there isn't an extra paragraph space in your code before the table? Does it happen with all tables? (Maybe another reason not to use Word, if you can help it? )

[jlemon]

Paul,

Thank you for your prompt reply.

In version 3.1, my Word output used to look a lot better (but never perfect). Some cleanup was always required. But ever since I took the 4.+ upgrades, the tables have looked like this. I switched to PDF, and everything looks great. But we may have a need for Word output, so I'm performing some tests to see if I can get the Word output to look cleaner.

As far as the table spacing goes, I do NOT use empty paragraphs. However, my CSS has some table spacing defined:

table
{
margin-top: 0.75em;
margin-bottom: 0.75em;
}

I'm assuming Word interprets these spaces as empty paragraphs. In fact, I think I may have originally added this style to add breathing space in my Word output. This spacing doesn't seem to be influencing my WebHelp output.

[doc_guy]

It *should * influence your WebHelp output, unless you set it in the Print section of the style sheet.

What other stuff degraded in Word output when you moved to Flare 4.x?

[jlemon]

I removed the table style and sure enough the empty paragraphs went away. So that answers that.

The only real change I noticed after upgrading was the degradation in the table padding. My tables didn't look so bad before. I had to make some other corrections, but the padding was OK. Is this standard for Word? Or are there some style sheet tricks that can help my tables look nicer?

Thanks,
-John

[jlemon]

I've found a solution.
I already had a complex selector for my online tables.
I just added some print medium settings to the same selector:

td p
{
margin: 0.75em 1em 0.5em 0.75em;
}

This pads the cells in Word output. The Word tables now look good wherever I've applied a "p" style within a table. The cool thing about this is it really stands out where I have NOT applied the "p" style, so you can quickly correct the table. My exact spacing is still a bit off, but some tweaking of each margin setting should get me there.