How do tables in Microsoft Word templates affect document building?
Background: Through the table editor and composite merge field features in document creation, it is possible to map tabular (rather than atomic) data onto a field in a Microsoft Word template. This effectively means that the field in the template is simply a placeholder for a whole table of values.
Obviously, given the above, it is desirable to have such data placed inside an existing Word table, on the expectation that ContactsLaw will advance to the next cell/row automatically. ContactsLaw does this by pasting your data into the Word document using a special mode, in which tab characters correspond to column delimiters and paragraph characters correspond to row delimiters. Unfortunately, however, this insertion mode will destroy any static text inside the table that crosses the path of the data being inserted.
For this reason, ContactsLaw will only span multiple columns and rows in a Word table when the following conditions are met:
- The data being inserted must not be blank
- The data being inserted must contain at least one tab
- The Word table must not contain merged cells
- If the data contains rich text (e.g. product descriptions, contact notes, etc), you must use the "Remove internal formatting" rule to avoid homogenising the data (and thus removing table delimiters)
In all other circumstances, ContactsLaw will simply replace the field in the template with the corresponding data, without overwriting either the adjacent cells or the remainder of the content of the cell containing the field.