Too often I open a docx file but the first row of a table is mangled i.e. the direction is reversed.
The attached file converted from docx to odt via Writer.
The table show fine in MS WOrd.
I just want to view the table alright without modifying it.
thanks
table-first-row-mangled.odt (12.9 KB)
You have attached an ODT, converted from DOCX. The problem happened either at the moment when Writer opened DOCX, or when it wrote ODT. The attached document already contains the damage, and doesn’t allow to diagnose the problem.
Note that “The table show fine in MS WOrd”, if you mean “Word opens the ODT as I axpect”, doesn’t mean anything. Word’s support of ODT is poor; and the fact that they cannot correctly read the ODT doesn’t change anything. The DOCX is necessary; and - what’s more important - what you wrote was a bug report, not something fellow users could help with.
There is probably something wrong in your heading row. I could not determine what.
To have an idea:
Table>Convert>Table to Text
Data rows are neatly converted to tab-separated fields. Your heading row comes out as 5 paragraphs instead of 1. This is probably a consequence of some cells containing 2 paragraphs, though this is totally allowed. If I turn these paragraphs into “fields” and Table>Convert>Text to Table, I get your table as expected (except for decoration/formatting which disappeared in the process).
Any “special” operation you apply on cells, like merge or text direction change, needs specific handling during conversion. It is not guaranteed they will be preserved considering the huge differences in formats.
Note also that Word and Writer have different default layout for tables: Writer prefers *Automatic" alignment (which allows for automatic adjustment when you change margins) while Word always specifies a width.