Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 22, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
If you have a table at the beginning of your document, and you are using Word 2000 or later versions, adding a blank line before the table is easy--all you need to do is position the insertion point at the start of the first cell and press Enter. It doesn't work that way in Word 97, however. There you need to use a different approach. Any of the following will do the trick:
The result is that Word inserts a Normal-formatted paragraph prior to the table.
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2021-06-30 10:42:24
Phil
wondering if you can help me. I have an excel table in word and it is cropped to look perfect. when I add a row in the excel table and expand the crop, I lose one row at the bottom. It is blank. Is there any way to show this?
(see Figure 1 below)
Figure 1.
2021-05-20 09:02:20
Kartik
Thanks a lot , was struggling a lot before .
2021-03-20 08:45:13
Lee R Batchelor
Thanks for this tip, Allen.
I'm using Word 2019. I have a table at the top of page 2. I place my cursor inside the beginning of the first cell of the table, press Enter, and it just creates a paragraph break inside the cell!! If I use the Word 97 method, Ctrl+Shift+Enter, it works! Why is that? Can't MS get anything right?
I'm using Windows 10 Home.
2021-02-10 03:25:17
Poopy
Great!. It helped me a lot Ctrl+Shift+Enter did the magic :)
2021-02-06 12:51:09
Thomas Bottoms
Thanks for this, Allen! But I found that Ctrl+Shift+Enter did not work for me, and many others. For some, it seems Word can lose the keyboard shortcut to perform the "InsertColumnBreak" function. I wrote up a Q&A on Superuser to help those folks out:
https://superuser.com/questions/1623957/ctrlshiftenter-does-not-insert-a-new-line-paragraph-before-table-in-ms-word/1623960#1623960
Thanks for all you do, Allen. You are an amazing resource for all things MS Word! :)
Best regards,
Tom
2020-11-28 17:07:01
Janet
Thank you, I was confounded when the old hitting enter twice didn't work. The keyboard short cut is most appreciated.
2017-01-23 05:45:04
kaka
This also works when adding a line before a table at the top of ANY page, not just the beginning of a document.
2016-12-09 11:36:36
Janice
I used to love tables. What have you done? Nothing is easy.
Things were fine until I installed 2010. I am so frustrated. It takes me all day to print tallies for euchre.
2016-09-29 07:30:33
ak
thank you!!! I was so frustrated with it!
2015-03-18 11:55:11
Tony
Thanks, that had been driving me crazy!
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