|
 Can't
see borders around table cells on your screen, even though they
print?
Can't
see white text on a black or colored background in a table?
Margin
lines missing on a page or a label?
Perhaps you have turned table gridlines "on"
or turned table guidelines "off." Here is some information about table gridlines,
table guidelines, and cell
borders - what they do and how they work.
[Also note that sometimes these issues
are not due to a WordPerfect setting: they might be caused by
some flat screen (LCD) monitors and Windows settings. See the
Notes and Tips below for some solutions.] |
There often is some confusion concerning the
distinction between table gridlines and table borders
(not to mention table guidelines), what they do,
and how they work.
The problem stems from the fact that table
gridlines, table borders, and table guidelines occupy the same
locations in a table. That is, they overlay the same screen areas.
Also, they can impact one another in opposite ways.
Table gridlines are faint gray (grey) dotted lines on your screen
around the borders of a table and its cells. They can be toggled
on and off with View, Table Gridlines. A check mark will
appear in the View menu if Table Gridlines is turned ON. (Important:
This feature is not toggled with View, Guidelines, Table.
Table guidelines is a different feature and is explained in a
separate section below.)
Table gridlines are available to help you
see the table's structure on the screen, so you know where to
insert material in specific cells and to guide you in formatting
row and column sizes, etc. They never print. They
are similar to the faint gray page margin lines in this respect
(page margins do not print, either: they just show on screen).
They occupy the same position on your screen as table borders
and table guidelines.
Here's what WordPerfect 9's Help (F1) file
says about table gridlines:
"Table gridlines are dimmed, dotted
lines that replace [visible] lines and fill in a table. Table
gridlines speed up the display of a document that contains many
tables or heavily formatted tables. However, tables print with
the lines and fill styles you have selected. You can choose to
always display table gridlines [see
"set the default" in the Tips below]."
However, these days with fast and powerful
computers with lots of memory (RAM), there's probably little
need for gridlines, which were designed to be helpful as described
above. But: Table gridlines -- if ON -- help you see the structure
of table cells in the event that table/cell borders are OFF and
table guidelines are also OFF (or are difficult to see).
Tips
- You can add a "toggle" button
to a toolbar to turn table gridlines
on and off; see here for help creating
toolbar buttons (the button is under the "View" feature
category in the Toolbar Editor, listed as "Table Gridlines").
Toggling also lets you see any "fills" such as reversed
backgrounds, where the background is black or some dark color
and the text is white or lightly colored.
- To set the default for this feature when you open a document, click Tools, Settings,
Display, Document, Show Table Gridlines. Also in that dialog
is an option to display the table formula indicators as blue
markers in the bottom corner of a table cell.
- In earlier versions of WordPerfect there was no menu selection for this item so you
needed to use Tools, Settings, Display, Document, Show Table
Gridlines.
- Macro writers can toggle the state of View, Table Gridlines with a small snippet such
as this one. For example, to disable View, Table Gridlines (i.e.,
turn it off):
- If(?TableGuides=1) // (i.e.,
if table gridlines are now ON...)
TableGridLinesToggle ()
// Optional message:
Messagebox(;"";"View>Table Gridlines is now
OFF.")
Endif
Return
- [In the above macro, to enable table
gridlines (turn the feature ON) set ?TableGuides=0 and change
the message (if used) to "ON".]
Table borders and individual
cell lines can be toggled on/off with
Table, Borders/Fill or by right-clicking inside the
table and selecting Borders/Fill.
They print only if they are toggled
on (which is the default for cell
lines; to change default borders and cell line settings, set
them to your preferences and use the Default Settings button
under the Table tab).
Unfortunately, you can see only
one or the other, gridlines or borders/cell lines, on
screen at the same time.
Gridlines (or
guidelines, below) will not impact the printing of table
borders or cell lines, if table borders/lines are ON. Gridlines
only impact what is on screen. If table gridlines are ON -- which
is sometimes the case depending on the setting in Tools, Settings,
Display, Document tab -- you can't see table borders or cell
lines (assuming they are ON).
Gridline display
takes precedence over table border or cell line display. You
have to toggle gridlines OFF (by un-selecting View, Table Gridlines)
so that you can see the table borders or cell lines onscreen
the way they will print.
Tips
- You can add a "toggle" button to
a toolbar to turn table gridlines on and off; see here for help creating toolbar buttons
(the button is under the "View" feature category in
the Toolbar Editor, listed as "Table Gridlines").
- Toggling also lets you see any "fills"
such as reversed backgrounds, where the background is black or
some dark color and the text is white or lightly colored.
Table guidelines are also
faint gray dotted lines on your screen around the borders of
a table and its cells. They never print. In general, you
probably should leave guidelines for tables turned ON
(enable View, Guidelines, Tables), because if you remove
all border lines and fills from a table and also have gridlines
turned OFF, you won't be able to see the table's cell boundaries
on your screen! Note that guidelines are also available for
margins, columns, and headers/footers.
However, some people prefer these particular
items turned ON, some prefer them OFF. But as noted, most users
will probably want to leave table guidelines ON all the
time, since they will not obscure table borders or cell lines
and are very useful when table borders or gridlines are turned
OFF. [See also the General Notes and Tips section below about
certain issues with LCD monitors.]
You can move guidelines. From WordPerfect 9's Help (F1):
"You can move guidelines in your document
to reposition tables, margins, columns, headers, and footers.
Guidelines must be visible in your document to move them."
[In the Guidelines dialog (click View,
Guidelines) the option,"Drag to move guidelines," must
be enabled to drag them on screen. But this can sometimes produce
a problem with the left page margin: see the General Notes and
Tips section below.]
Tips
- Macro writers can turn on/off any of the
5 Guideline settings (View, Guidelines) with a macro that uses
the Guidelines() command (see Macro Help for more on using this
command with the various Guideline states).
- For example, to enable View, Table
Guidelines (i.e., turn it on):
vTableGuidelineState:=1&Guidelines
If(vTableGuidelineState=0) // (i.e., table guidelines
off)
Guidelines (ShowTableGuides:Yes!)
Messagebox(;"";"View>Guidelines>Tables
is now ON.")
Endif
Return
- For example, to disable View, Table
Guidelines (i.e., turn it off):
vTableGuidelineState:=1&Guidelines
If(vTableGuidelineState=1) // (i.e., table guidelines
on)
Guidelines (ShowTableGuides:No!)
Messagebox(;"";"View>Guidelines>Tables
is now Off.")
Endif
Return
General
Notes and Tips
- If you find that you often accidentally drag
the left page margin guideline slightly out of position
when you are trying to select text at that location by clicking
your left mouse button next to the margin, you can remove this
annoyance by clicking on View, Guidelines. Then uncheck "Drag
to move guidelines." Of course, you will now have to set
margins from the Format menu, not by dragging them.
- On some monitors, particularly LCD monitors,
an incorrect screen resolution can cause such faint lines to
fall between pixels and not appear on screen. Please ensure that
the monitor is set to its preferred resolution, both vertical
and horizontal. Otherwise gridlines, guidelines, and even
text underlines can "fall between the cracks."
- If lines, borders, or underlines do not appear
on screen but appear in a printout, try setting your monitor's
Zoom to a slightly different setting with View, Zoom or
by holding down the <Ctrl> key while you rotate your mouse
wheel.
- If you have the View turned to Draft mode,
guidelines won't display on some monitors (but
gridlines will). Try using Page mode.
- If label and margin gridlines or guidelines
don't display properly on the screen (e.g., they are too faint),
it could be a problem with Windows and flatscreen (e.g., LCD)
monitors.
- [Update 11/2/2010: Service
Pack 1 for WPX5 seems to have corrected this -- at least
on the author's Windows 7/64-bit Home Premium system.]
- Solution: From
Corel's support database (Answer ID 207679):
- Modifying the Windows Classic style in
the Display Properties to a darker shade of gray will resolve
this issue.
- Tip: Select
just a small amount of darker gray or you might not be able to
see toolbar labels.
- For Windows XP:
- 1. Right click on the Desktop, select Properties.
2. Select the Appearance tab.
3. Click the Advanced button.
4. Select 3D Objects in the Item dropdown
5. Under Color 1, choose a darker shade of gray.
6. Click OK, then click Apply on the Appearance tab.
7. Click OK, launch WordPerfect.
- The grid lines should be more visible, the
darker the shade of gray you select the more visible the gridlines
will be.
- For Windows Vista:
- 1. Right click on the Desktop, select Personalize
2. Click on Window Color Appearance
3. Click on Open Classic Appearance
4. Click the Advance button
5. Select 3D Objects in the Item dropdown
6. Under Color 1, choose a darker shade of gray.
7. Click OK, then click Apply on the Appearance tab.
8. Click OK, launch WordPerfect.
- The grid lines should be more visible, the
darker the shade of gray you select the more visible the gridlines
will be.
- For Windows 7:
- 1. Right click on the Desktop, select Personalize
2. Click on Window Color
3. Click on Advanced appearance settings
4. Select 3D Objects in the Item dropdown
5. Under Color 1, choose a darker shade of gray (or click Other
and choose a RGB value of (for example) from the default of 240,240,240
to 230,230,230).
6. Click OK, then click Apply on the Window Color and Appearance
tab.
7. Click OK, launch WordPerfect.
- The grid lines should be more visible, the
darker the shade of gray you select the more visible the gridlines
will be.
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Barry MacDonnell's