Merged cells in tables ignored in Word

[jjw]

I have some tables with a number of merged cells. When I publish to Word, the merges are ignored. It doesn't seem to make any difference whether they are rowspans or colspans. I can't see anything wrong with the table markup in Flare, and it renders fine in HTML output.

Is this a known issue? Is there a workaround - or do I just have to avoid merged cells for Word output or resign myself to a lot of cleanup?

J

[dorcutt]

Hi jjw.

This seems like it is probably a bug. I have not heard of this specific bug with tables with Word output, but it is not surprising. The Flare Word output is exceptionally buggy, and Word tables are a haphazard beast in their own right.

In general, for Word output bugs this is my usual approach:

1. File a bug report and pray it gets fixed.
2. Use Flare to make PDF output, then use Adobe Acrobat to convert the PDF into Word output and hope that works
3. Attempt to "Get it in post" with a Word macro
4. If possible/convenient/necessary, try to make changes within Flare to avoid the Word output bug

Word has an incredibly powerful ability to write custom macros in VBA using the Word Document Object model. I have a macro in Word called "FlareOutputClean" that I run every time I open Word Output. It fixes a lot of nonsense, but every user has their own issues.

Some issues are easy to fix with a macro, and others are not. This looks like one that is not easy at all. Can you provide screenshots of how the tables look in a web browser versus word? That would be a good thing to have for your bug report anyway.

Edit: UPDATE: I just tried to create a simple merged cell in Word Output and Flare 11, and the results were as I expected. Are you using an earlier version of Flare? This may be a more specific bug or issue than I initially assumed.

[jjw]

Thanks for the reply - I'll do as you suggest and file a bug report. I am using Word 2013 and Flare 11, but perhaps it's the sheer size of the table that's causing problems. Agree about the need for post publication macros, I have a growing set of my own.

The problem with tables is that I can't see an easy way to identify specific types of table in VBA, and I don't want to treat all tables the same way. Any table classes are lost in the conversion from Flare of course. I could wrap the tables in specific paragraph styles for example, but that seems rather too kludgy.

J

[dorcutt]

Hrm, I was using Word 2010, though it seems unlikely that was the cause. Of course, if you can determine exactly what makes the bug reproducible, it will be much much more likely to be fixed.

Wrapping it in the paragraph tag may be kludgy, but I think it will do the trick. If you don't want a paragraph tag around your table, one alternative is to put a placeholder paragraph tag of particular styles before and after the table and condition them so that they appear only in Word Output. Then you can use VBA to look for those tags, format the table appropriately, and clean up afterwards by eliminating those tags. That way, the fix for the Word output will only affect the Word output. I hate altering my other output types to fix Word output issues, so I might take that route.

[imflowers]

Hi! I was wondering if someone has figured this out. I have the same issue - the table looks perfect in HTML output and PDF, but not in Word. However, publishing on a different computer from the same Flare file with the same Word 2013 - has NO ISSUES! What is going on???

[dorcutt]

Hrm, if it's a machine specific issue, try doing the following standard Madcap troubleshooting steps:

First, please verify the version of .NET framework installed on the machine. With Flare V11, you should have at least Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.1.

Once you locate the version, I would like you to run a repair of all the instances of Microsoft .NET Framework on your machine by following the steps below:

-Open Windows Control Panel
-Programs and Features
-Search for Microsoft .NET Framework
-Right-click the item > Uninstall/Change > repair

The machine will need to be restarted to complete the repair. Please advise if this improves the performance.

Then, let's clean out some temporary folders for the project, these were removed during the zipping process, so they were already cleaned out for me:

-Close Flare
-Using Windows Explorer, browse to your project folder.
-Delete the Analyzer and Output folders (make a backup of your output folder if you do not want to lose any previously built targets).
-Browse into your Project folder and delete the Users folder.

This could possibly resolve the bug. Otherwise, it would probably have to be solved by manually fixing the output after creation or coding a custom Word macro to automatically fix the issue after you open the output (not a trivial task).