>> Hi Cheryl,

>> Thanks for your post.

>>>Was this "table" in HTML or in a word.doc?

>> The table was created in Word 95 by someone else doing the book)

> OK, scratch that option, then.

>>>After you tried the changing the font on the column,
>>>A. Did you save it as DOS-text or MS-text?

>> It was a Word document. Just a two column table.
>> The font was Times New Roman regular for the people and place names and
>> TNR italics for the ship names
>> but when I converted the table to text it reversed the regular and
>> italics of the font. i.e. people and place names were in italics and the
>> ship names were in regular - weird I think.

> Uhhh -- I must still not understand.  AFTER you stripped the formatting,
> didn't you save it as plain-text?

>>>B. Did you open the .txt file in word-pad or in word?

>> I opened the file (on my computer) in Word.

> I can't explain WHY, but try this then.

> Open the file in Word.  Remove all formatting, including the table.

> SAVE AS: plain text, as file.txt  Close file; close WORD.

> Open file.txt in Notepad or Wordpad, and SAVE, even if you made not a
> single change to it.

> Now you ought to be able to open file.txt in WORD and see your format
> changes.

>> I am going to give word-pad a try as I never thought about that - it has
>> less formatting doesn't it?

>> Will let you know what happens with word-pad.

>> As I am a stubborn person, I intend to find out if this can be done
>> without all these hassles.  I did read somewhere that Word does have
>> quirky bits in it that may do this type of trick.

> WORD has some built-in, little noticed "features" that restore user-made
> FUBARs.  Unfortunately, it can't seem to tell a FUBAR from non-FUBAR, so
> it frequently restores stuff one doesn't want restored.

> Cheryl