Can't Change Border Colors

[luckystriker]

Hi everyone. I'm trying to change the border colors of some tables in OpenOffice Writer, but nothing is happening. If I take any table I've made and try to change the border color, the color doesn't change, and when I go back to try again, the menu still shows black (or whatever) as my selected color, as if I've never tried to change it. Changing the color only works if I make a new table and immediately change the colors before typing anything inside. This is a huge problem because I have some elaborate tables that would be a pain to reproduce from scratch just to change the colors. Occasionally I can get maybe one side of one cell to change color, if I keep highlighting different numbers and combinations of cells. It's very strange and I don't know why it's acting like this.

[Hagar Delest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Can you upload a sample file (see How to attach a document here)?

[luckystriker]

Thanks. Here's one I just made. Some cells I can change; some I can't. And I definitely can't change all at once.

[John_Ha]

It's quite tricky to explain, but I think it goes like this

1 If you want to change all then you must first select the table, so put cursor in table and Table > Select table. Then Table > Table properties and change the borders. This allows me to change all the borders in your table.

2 When you look at the little table image in the Borders dialogue, some lines are solid, some dotted and some grey and thick. This is to represent that some lines are different from the others. If you click on an edge, that edge takes the current selected colour/thickness and the line becomes a thin solid line.

3 If you want to change the borders to just some cells, then highlight those cells (I usually Table > Select cells but it un-highlights all except the first) and Table > Table Properties ...

I always get confused changing just some borders and find it much easier to switch all borders off, and start from fresh ...

Perhaps someone can give a better explanation than me (and hopefully I can learn it too!)

[Hagar Delest]

Works fine for me on your table.
Have you tried to reset your OpenOffice user profile?

[John_Ha]

It's quite tricky to explain, but I think it goes like this

Have a look at Chapter 9 Working with tables in the OO Users Guide - it has more of an explanation about setting borders and how to use the User defined mini-table in the dialogue.

Remember, that when you set the colour of the bottom border of a cell, you are simultaneously setting the top border of the cell below.

Also, if you highlight, say, three cells before going Table > Table properties, then what you change applies to only those three cells.