Why are my table options grayed out?

[Agnes]

Hi everyone,
I have some layout issues with tables. I can’t get them to be the size I want and part of it is missing for some of the tables. I took some screenshots hoping it will help clarify.
If I make a table, at first it’s fine. I can resize it, I can change things about it, no real problems. But later (it happens at least when I insert a caption, but I think it also happened without a caption once or twice) I can’t seem to make any more changes to it. All option are grayed out, and when I enter the “Table” menu at the top most options are grayed out, including “properties”. I’m not sure the cut off table (see the last picture) is caused by this same problem or is a different one altogether.
This would all not be a problem if I could just make sure the layout is as I want it before I add the caption, but as soon as I add a caption, the table is resized and often also re-positioned on the page.
I’m sorry for being a bit vague. I hope the screenshots help clarify what I mean. Thank you so much for your time and help

EDIT:

Difficult to diagnose from your
screenshots because you didn’t enable
View>Formatting Marks and various
boundary indicators. Please, edit your
question by posting similar
screenshots with the marks/boundaries
visible. I suspect that when you added
a caption the inserted frame does not
span from margin to margin but has a
smaller size. Then there is the
difficulty to click inside the reduced
table and not outside it (in the
frame).

Thanks, that seems to be pointing in the right direction for sure. Here’s a screenshot with Formatting Marks and Text Boundaries on Table Boundaries makes no difference.

In my test document that worked. The problem was a text boundary (the inserted frame?), I could drag a corner to increase the size and that was that. However, in my actual document I’m working on there is a frame that at first didn’t want to change size. I went into its properties and deselected the “width relative to” options that were checked, and that made me able to drag it to resize. However, now I have a similar problem in that I can’t seem to align it with the text. I can’t move it around. Nothing in the properties of that frame jumps out at me as being the possible solution. I tried dragging the marker thingy in the size bar above the page (it would be helpful if I had a clue about the names of these things, sorry) What am I missing? Your suggestions already made me able to at least get the info in the table readable, so that’s a huge win already!

EDIT2:
What I also think is interesting, is some of these are grayed out (but the vertical ones are not and they do work) when I select the problematic frame

(edited 2020-08-11 by ajlittoz to enabled screenshot view in the question)

[mikekaganski]

Because what you have is not a table, but inserted OLE object.

[ajlittoz]

Difficult to diagnose from your screenshots because you didn’t enable View>Formatting Marks and various boundary indicators. Please, edit your question by posting similar screenshots with the marks/boundaries visible.

I suspect that when you added a caption the inserted frame does not span from margin to margin but has a smaller size. Then there is the difficulty to click inside the reduced table and not outside it (in the frame).

[keme]

When you have the object selected, try to doubleclick inside it, or press the enter key. That is the two most common ways to “enter into” an object so you can edit content or properties.

[ajlittoz]

About your EDIT1: I’m a bit confused by the updated screenshot. Either you are in View>Hide Whitespace or there is a section for the table and its caption and this would complicate matters.

With frames, the important factor is the anchor, i.e. the reference location for the frame. Which is it?

The horizontal ruler above the page allows you to manually control (not recommended) some paragraph characteristics like indents and tab stops. This has no effect on frame positioning.

If you can’t clear things yourself, attach a sample file to your question: 3 pages at most with text before and after the table/frame. I’ll give a look at it.

About EDIT2: theses are frame controls. Ssome of these are disabled because they make no sense with the current definition of the frame, therefore the need to check frame properties with regard to what you want to achieve. I get the same disabling when the anchor is “as character”, which is a quite rare mode for side information.

[Agnes]

Thanks, I’ll play around with it and see if this helps me find a fix. Your efforts to help me are very much appreciated!!

[cam2020]

For what it’s worth, I had a similar problem with table options being greyed out in LibreOffice Impress. Following the fine above named hint, I simply clicked on the margin of my table, the directly into one cell of the the row I wanted to delete.

Works just fine! As soon as the margin is clicked, the 4 little white / transparent squares appear on the edges of that table.
Clicking into the cell right afterwards, you’ll see that the options are active.

Thanks, dear posters - very happy to finally have found the solution to what seemed a bizarre problem!