TableStyle is overwritten by document style

[buhtz]

It seems to me that the "global" document style do overwrite "lower" styles e.g. TableStyle. I assume I misunderstand the concept here.

See this code as an example

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import docx

document = docx.Document()
document.styles['Normal'].font.name = 'Fira Mono'
document.styles['Normal'].font.size = docx.shared.Pt(8)

my_tab_style = document.styles.add_style('MyTab', docx.enum.style.WD_STYLE_TYPE.TABLE)
my_tab_style.font.name = 'Fira Sans'
my_tab_style.font.size = docx.shared.Pt(20)

p = document.add_paragraph('Should be Fira Mono 8pt')

tab = document.add_table(rows=1, cols=1, style='MyTab')
tab.rows[0].cells[0].text = 'Should be Fira Sans 20pt'

document.save('test.docx')
os.system('start test.docx')

I would expect the document text in "Fira Mono 8pt" and the table content in "Fira Sans 20pt". But it isn't.

When you outcomment the document style lines

# document.styles['Normal'].font.name = 'Fira Mono'
# document.styles['Normal'].font.size = docx.shared.Pt(8)

the table style is taken into account.

[scanny]

Hmm, interesting observation. I can't say I understand exactly how table styles work, but I'd like to.

I assume the style hierarchy for paragraphs within tables has precedence something like this:

1. Directly applied formatting like bold or italic.
2. An explicitly-applied paragraph style
3. A controlling aspect of table style, if there is one
4. Document defaults
5. Word preset defaults

But I suspect it's not that simple.

This fellow has a very interesting post on the topic:
https://www.brandwares.com/bestpractices/2021/08/word-table-styles-best-practices/

I think it's going to take some research and experimentation with Word itself, perhaps including inspecting the XML it produces, to understand how all this needs to be done to achieve the expected outcome.

I'd love to know more about it and consider additions to the library and documentation for this if you come up with more insight on it :)