Forum Discussion
Word in Office 365: Can't print selection if it's in a table
How come if I select a table and print, the Print Selection option is disabled, but if I select a table plus one preceding or following line of text, it's enabled?
If I select any part of a table -- a group of rows or columns, or even a piece of text within a single cell -- Print Selection is disabled. I can't print the any part of the table unless I also print something outside it too.
2 Replies
May consider below workarounds:
- Copy to a New Document
- Select the table (or rows/columns you want).
- Copy and paste into a new blank Word document.
- Print normally.
- Convert Table to Text
- Select the table.
- Go to Table Tools > Layout > Convert to Text.
- Once converted, “Print Selection” works.
- Undo after printing if you want to keep the table.
- Export to PDF
- Select the table, copy it into a new document.
- Save as PDF and print the PDF.
- This avoids formatting issues.
I appreciate your attempt to help, but I don't see that any of those options is useful.
1. Creating a new document and copying and pasting content into it every time I want to print something is not a reasonable workaround. In the same sense, if some kind of political disturbance made it impossible to drive from New York to Chicago, driving from New York to Chicago via Atlanta would not be a reasonable workaround. A viable last resort in a life-or-death situation, yes; but "workaround" implies something that is practical for ongoing use, and this is not.
2. If I convert the table to text, it becomes much harder to read at best; it may be effectively impossible.
3. See (1).
I can think of two responsive answers to this problem:
A. Here is how to make it work.
B. Thank you for identifying this bug. I will report it to Microsoft.
Please try again.
- Copy to a New Document
