Large table in .doc file won't break for pages in Writer

I have a Word document that mostly consist of a large table. Page breaks don’t work, so the table just runs off the page and is mostly invisible. Text flow settings in the table properties settings are mostly greyed out, so it can’t be fixed there. How can I fix the table in Writer?

I would try the following

copy and past the WORD table into

  • a writer table of the same number of rows and columns - writer tables appear to by easy to handle
    or
  • calc sheet and then go back to a new writer file and copy from calc sheet into writer by using paste-special html format. I made the experience that the html tables are very easy to handle

Copying and pasting into the same document causes Writer to crash, but pasting into a new document works, with no need to create a table beforehand.