Header Way Too Large! Table Problem.

I have had an interesting problem with headers and tables in a Word
2003 document. This is the problem, and a workaround fix.

In a ~100 page document, there's a long section of table. I want to
put headers into this document and so I View - Headers and Footers.
When I do this I see that the header is taking up 3/4 of the page!
The header is way too big, and extends down all the way to the
footer. After much wrangling and teeth-gnashing I figured out that it
was the table.

The table is one long continuous thing extending over multiple pages.
I guess the header doesn't see it as content if it's just continued
from the previous page, and so the header goes all the way down. When
I put my cursor on the last row of the table on any given page, and
then select Table - Split Table, the header rights itself on the next
page.

This is far from ideal. Now when I add information to the split up
tables on any given page it spills over to the next page and I'm stuck
with reformatting all over again. And splitting the table on the
first page messes up my column headings with overlaid text. (I
haven't yet investigated why.) It would be nice if Word were
intelligent enough to handle headers in a multi-page continuous table.

But I figured I'd post this bit of information. Everything I found
online (including in this forum) suggested checking that vertical
alignment, in page setup of the header, was set to top and not
center. That wasn't relevant to my problem. Check your tables!

--
Todd Walton