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Set banding colors in Word 2010 table styles

Word 2010 offers Table Styles to allow you to apply a style to a table in your document.

You can use the built-in table styles by clicking inside a table, then clicking Design on the toolbar. You will see a range of table styles to choose from.

Part of the table style is an option to set 'banding' within the table. This allows you to automatically set shading on each row of the table. The idea is that you can shade alternate rows different colors. The table styles are a quick and easy way to do this.

You can create your own table style by expanding the Table Styles section on the toolbar and choosing New Table Style. From there you can name your style and configure the settings for the style.

To control the colour of the bandings, change the Formatting scope ("Apply formatting to" from Whole Table to Odd Rows or Even Rows (or Columns if you want to set column banding).

Then, click the Format button and choose Borders and Shading from the list of options. After that you can set the shading color as you would normally for a table. This color will then be applied automatically when you apply that table style.

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Where is "Design" on the toolbar?

Submitted by on

This comment is for those (like me) trying to achieve this but endlessly frustrated at being unable to find the appropriate control on the "ribbon" toolbar.
The "Design" and "Layout" containing the controls you need are hidden and only appear on your ribbon when you actually click inside a table.
This is part of the modern "you can't see it if you don't need it" design philosophy (which might be great for an expert, but of little help to rest of us).
Quite why "Banding" is not available from "Table Properties >"Borders and Shading" simply defies all logic.

column bands

Submitted by on

Is it just me, or do column band settings not actually work in Word? I set a cell shading for odd column bands in the style modifier window, and the settings were saved, but they do not display in the table. When I open the style modifier window again, the column band settings I set are still there. Also, I viewed the source XML of the the style (docx files are just ZIP archives of mostly XML files) I modified, and the shading settings I set are there as well, so they are being set, just not actually displayed.
I noticed none of the built-in table styles use column bands, so I am wondering whether MS forgot to implement them. Otherwise, there must be another setting somewhere overriding my column band settings that I need to turn off.

nevermind

Submitted by on

There's a checkbox you have to turn on (part of the table look properties, so different tables can use different parts of the same style (I'm sure that's common))

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