PPT97: Microsoft Word Table Borders Disappear on Screen

If you create a table in Microsoft Word 97 for Windows with the default border applied and embed the table into Microsoft PowerPoint 97 for Windows, the gridlines may not all appear. If you zoom in or zoom out, different gridlines appear and disappear. When you print the slide, all the gridlines print correctly.

This is not a problem with Microsoft PowerPoint. If you embed the same table into Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word, or any other program that supports zooming in or out, you see the same effect.

This is by design. By default, Word tables don't have borders. If you turn them on, they are one half or three quarters of a point by default. This border thickness prints very nicely, even to very high-resolution printers. Unfortunately, this border thickness is narrow enough so that when you turn the table into a picture (which is what happens when you insert a Word table into another program) some of the lines disappear on screen.

Edit your table to increase the point size. You can edit your Word 97 table using the following steps:

1. Double-click the table to activate it.
2. On the Table menu, click Select Table.
3. On the Format menu, click Borders and Shading.
4. Choose a point size of at least 1 pt from the Width list. You may need to choose a size up to 2-1/4 pts, depending upon your video resolution.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was corrected in Microsoft PowerPoint 97 Service Release 1.