Tables not printing?

Question

I'm having problems with tables in my printed documentation.
If I include my online header and footers (which are formatted as
tables in the topic template), the conversion to Word works as it
should. However, if I hide (use conditional build tags for) the
online header and footers, any tables and any topic text that
precedes the tables do not convert.
Here's what I've done:
1) I've generated Printed Documentation with no conditional
build tags applied. Everything comes through, including tables. My
styles map as they should. The only problem is that my online
headers and footers (which are defined in the topic template) show
up at the top and bottom of every converted topic, which is not
what I want.
2) To get rid of the online headers and footers, I marked
them as "online" in my topic template. When I generate the printed
document, I set the Conditional Build Expression to "NOT online."
Again, the styles map as they should, but many topics are
incomplete. I figured out that topics that include tables are
converting incorrectly. Specificially, all topic text before a
table is missing, all table text is missing, and any text after the
table is unformatted. As soon as a new topic without a table
appears in the Word file, the formatting is fine.
3) To test whether the online header/footers were causing the
problem, I removed the topic template from a topic that had a table
and regenerated the printed documentation. Sure enough, the table
in THAT one topic converted correctly.
I suspect that the problem is stemming from some sort of
nested table issue between the table in the header of my
document(which I'm attempting to suppress with conditional text)
and the tables in the body of my document. How can I get my topic
tables to convert while still hiding the tables in my headers?

Answer 1

I managed to resolve my dilemma late yesterday when I applied
my online condition tag to just the rows in the table, not to the
entire table (using View > Tag List). Leon, I suspect you were
right that the conditional tag wasn't properly wrapped around the
TR codes. As soon as I did that, I could generate the printed
documentation correctly -- the online headers and footers did not
appear and the tables and topic text converted correctly. But, for
some reason, one of the 103 topics in the printed documentation
still includes the online header and footer. I checked and it used
the same template and there's nothing apparently odd about it--yet
every time I convert, that one topic comes through with the online
header/footer attached. Very odd.
As for the other comments about online headers and footers
not converting--I guess I'm just lucky! When creating the topic
template, I simply used the View > Header and View > Footer
menu options. The header consists entirely of a table (repeats the
name of the book and our corporate logo at the top of each topic).
The footer is just text (links to a standard copyright statement).
While I was unintentionally able to convert to printed
documentation, they ended up within the body of the Word
document--not as the header and footer in Word. So there was no
advantage to having them.
Here's a copy of the HTML of my template heading. Peter, let
me know the best way to send a sample project.
<div placeholder
id=header
style="width: 100%; position: relative;">
<!--(Table)=========================================================-->
<table x-use-null-cells
style="width: 100%;
x-cell-content-align: Center;
border-spacing: 0px;
border-spacing: 0px;"
cellspacing=0
width=100%>
<col style="width: 5%;">
<col style="width: 95%;">
<tr style="x-cell-content-align: center; height: 20px;"
valign=middle>
<td colspan=1
rowspan=1
style="width: 5%;
padding-right: 10px;
padding-left: 10px;
x-condition: Online;"
width=5%>
<p style="text-align: right;"
align=right><img
src="!SkinSubFolder!/XP_Blue/logo.large.gif"
x-maintain-ratio=TRUE
style="border: none;
width: 211px;
height: 60px;
float: none;
border-style: none;
border-style: none;"
width=211
height=60
border=0></td>
<td colspan=1
rowspan=1
style="width: 95%;
padding-right: 10px;
padding-left: 10px;
x-condition: Online;"
width=95%>
<p class=DocTitle>Administration User's
Guide</td></tr>
<tr style="x-cell-content-align: center; height: 1px;"
valign=middle>
<td rowspan=1
colspan=2
style="width: 5%;
padding-right: 10px;
padding-left: 10px;
border-right-style: none;
border-bottom-style: none;
border-left-style: none;"
width=5%>
<!--(HR)============================================================-->
<hr style="float: aligncenter;
height: 1px;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px;
color: #f1bb46;"
align=center
size=1
color=#F1BB46>
</td>
<td_null></tr>
</table>
</div>
(BTW, is there anyway to make "View > Tag List" the
default view? It's incredibly useful for selecting just the right
bit of text.)