# Greyed out option



## reblak (Sep 28, 2009)

I have both XP Pro Windows SP3 and XP Pro Office 2007 installed. My CPU is AMD, about 1800. There is 2GB of memory and buckets of free hard disk space. I use Word 2007 extensively without program problems until now. I recently added "Table to Text" to the Quick Access Table, but it is greyed out and nothing I do makes it work. I have tried reinstalling (several times) and used all the option without any useful result. I ran the MS Diagnostics tool and it said everything is OK - but it isn't! Some MS connected 'advisor' suggested that Office Pro should only be run by businesses 'using' a 'server', (I use Tiscali!) but otherwise hadn't a clue and I was deeply unimpressed! I have used both systems on my private home built computer for several years (formerly with Office Pro 2002) and have just the usual couple of crashes and reinstallations, far, far less than with earlier MS systems. So did the 'advisor' know what he was talking about and can anyone 'advise' on activating this greyed out option? Thank you.


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## macropod (Apr 11, 2008)

Hi reblak,

Without wanting to sound supercilious, did you make sure nothing other than a single table was selected (even just having the insertion point in a table is enough) before trying to convert the table to text?


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## reblak (Sep 28, 2009)

Thank you Macropod. This was a word table in a PDF to Word conversion. It has turned out that Word did not recognise it as a table and was simply ignoring it as such a table. Consequently Word was compromised in any format process applied to it. The solution was to copy the table to Notepad and then copy it back to Word. This info should be useful in that a greyed out option may mean Word itself does recognise the subject as a Word procedure and Notepad may be the answer.


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## macropod (Apr 11, 2008)

reblak said:


> This was a word table in a PDF to Word conversion. It has turned out that Word did not recognise it as a table and was simply ignoring it as such a table. ... The solution was to copy the table to Notepad and then copy it back to Word.


In effect, then, it wasn't a true table - it was simply a block of text formatted to look like a table. Presumably round-tripping via Notepad simply removed any horizontal & vertical lines that had given the text the appearance of a table. This would leave you with a tabular layout where the 'columns' are represented by spaces and/or tabs.


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