Actually I've seen the behavior you describe when there are convoluted char
styles in the file. They are pretty much unavoidable in Word 2003. And they
cause the weirdest behavior: The header or footer style suddenly becomes
TOC5 or the size of Body Text becomes 3 points every time I open the file.
Getting rid of char (broken) styles is the only sure fix for this. But it
has steadily gotten harder to do that because the MS programmers seem to
think that we are imagining these problems and have taken great pains to
hide the broken styles from users. Styles either don't break or are much
less likely to break in W2007. I work mainly in W2007 but many of the files
I get were done in 2003 and they almost always have char styles. So I will
be so glad when my clients abandon W2003.

I doubt that table styles are the cause of your symptoms but just in case,
make sure that no font characteristics have been set in the table style (if
they have, set them back to the settings in normal or if, that doesn't work,
delete the table style and start over) and that you are using paragraph
styles to format the text in the tables.

HTH,
Pam

HelenaB wrote:
When I open a Word 2003 document the table formatting changes because a
paragraph style has been applied as a table style. This paragraph style has
not been used to format the text within the table cells, another style is
used for this. The paragraph style has not been used anywhere in the document
although it is one of the styles available within the document. The table is
formatted with Table Grid.

I can see the spurious style in Reveal Formatting. I can remove the style
and revert back to the correct table style by pressing Ctrl + Q (Reset Para).

I have tried removing the spurious paragraph style only for Word to pick up
another style. This is entirely random.

Could someone tell me why this could be happening.

Thanks
HelenaB

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