Changing the Color of Table Lines (?)

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tbl

In a rather complex table in Word 2002, I'd like to change
all of the line colors from black to blue (without getting
black and blue myself) in one easy step, but I don't see a
way of doing this.

Any good souls here know a trick or two?
 
Use one of the multitude of ways to select the table (triple-clicking in the
table is one easy way, Alt+5 on the Num Pad is another) and then use Format,
Borders and Shading. On the Borders tab, select Black from the colour
selector and the thickness of line from Line Style and then click on the ALL
icon: all the grid lines should change to a printable black.
 
Use one of the multitude of ways to select the table (triple-clicking in the
table is one easy way, Alt+5 on the Num Pad is another) and then use Format,
Borders and Shading. On the Borders tab, select Black from the colour
selector and the thickness of line from Line Style and then click on the ALL
icon: all the grid lines should change to a printable black.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the reply.

What I'm after here is a way to change *just* the color of
the lines. There are several thicknesses of lines in these
tables, and I don't want to mess with that--it would take a
long, long time.
 
In Word 2007, you can definitely select the table and use the Borders and
Shading dialog to select a new colour and it will apply itself immediately
to all borders without effecting the thickness setting. I'm not sure about
earlier versions though.

Terry
 
Select the whole table. Right-click the selected table and click on Borders
and Shading. In the Borders tab, drop down the Color control and choose the
color you want.
 
Herb, I believe your response and Terry's, but I can't make it work at
all, in either 2003 or 2007. When I change the color in the dialog
(with "Apply to" set to Table), the color simply doesn't change if the
borders aren't all the same type and weight (that is, if "Custom" is
selected in the left column). What am I missing?

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.
 
I completely missed the part about there being several thicknesses of lines
before. Yeah -- you're right. When "Custom" is enabled, it doesn't work.

In Word 2007, you can change just the border colors with the Colors tool in
the Page Layout tab. But, that will affect other theme-based colors as well.
So "just the border" might not be the case if other colors are employed
elsewhere.

So, I guess if you want to change border colors and line widths, the rule is
to change the color first, because [apparently], you can't apply just color.
Word forces you to apply line width at the same time.

It would take a macro to do it the other way around. The macro would need to
memorize the line types/thicknesses, apply the color, then reapply the
customized thicknesses.
 
Jay

Unfortunately, as Herb noted, you are correct. I only tested it with a table
using one of the default selections and not with custom active. I learn
something new every day! Maybe this can be done through VBA?

Terry
 
Of course it can be done in VBA, and it's almost trivial:

Sub TableRecolorBorders()
Dim oBrd As Border
Dim oTbl As Table

For Each oTbl In ActiveDocument.Tables
For Each oBrd In oTbl.Borders
oBrd.Color = wdColorBlue ' or use a color picker
Next oBrd
Next oTbl
End Sub

I'm a bit disappointed in the UI, though. The dialog looks as though it's
going to do what you ask, but then it just does nothing.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
In a rather complex table in Word 2002, I'd like to change
all of the line colors from black to blue (without getting
black and blue myself) in one easy step, but I don't see a
way of doing this.

Any good souls here know a trick or two?
Click to expand...


Thanks to all who replied. It looks like we're all stuck
with manually changing the colors for existing, complex
tables, but at least we *know* we're stuck.

And for new tables, think about color, first!

Thanks everybody.
 
Especially disappointing that it does it for all but Custom borders. In fact
its weird.

Terry
 
Jay's macros works fine.

Terry

tbl said:
Thanks to all who replied. It looks like we're all stuck
with manually changing the colors for existing, complex
tables, but at least we *know* we're stuck.

And for new tables, think about color, first!

Thanks everybody.
Click to expand...
 
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