There’s something annoying about the tables in Word 2007. There is always a padding of about half a line between the the last line of the text and the bottom of the cell; I can’t see to align text in the middle exactly; there is always this buffer line at the bottom.
Attempting to tweak the height of the cell has no effects whatsoever. Basically, I am looking for the Word 2003-style default table. Any ideas on how I can get that?
If I’m understanding you, this might work:
Select the whole table (click “Table” on the menu, then “Select”, then “Table” from the subsequent menus).
Then go to “Table Properties” (click “Table” again on the top menu, then "Properties).
Choose “Cell” from the subseqent menu, then click the “Options” button. You’ll get a menu that allows you to modify the cell margins. Make sure the “same as the whole table” box isn’t checked. You’ll be able to enter whatever margins you like.
Another possibility is that the style applied to whatever you’re entering in the table cells has spacing specified after the text. Go to “Format Paragraph” and make sure it doesn’t (or format the style if there’s a paragraph style applied to all the text in the table).
The default table settings in Word 2007 are not any different from Word 2003.
As Saintly mentioned, you can modify the settings for cell padding, but top and bottom padding by default is 0".
Also what you may be running into is that the default line spacing in Word 2007 is 1.15 lines AND Spacing After each paragraph (hard return) is 10pts, rather than 1 line and 0 points as in previous versions. So, if you have hard returns at the end of your cell contents, you’re adding space. Even in previous versions of Word you shouldn’t have been adding hard returns.
I also wonder about your statement “I can’t see to align text in the middle exactly; there is always this buffer line at the bottom.” If you are trying to center the text – vertically or horizontally in the cell, then go to Layout tab in the Table Tools section and use the Alignment group.
Yep, this is what I have tried. I tried to align the text in the center horizontally and vertically, but there is always a few pixel gap to the bottom border.
I tried setting the theme to Word 2003 and I got back the old look, though.