How can I add a paragraph directly after Word table?

If I have a document with a table in it, how do I add a new paragraph directly after the table?
For example:

Example document

Note the cross reference (which is a hyperlink) back to Heading 1b.

The only way I've found to add a new paragraph after the table (but before Heading 1b) is to put the cursor at the start of Heading 1b, and press Enter. This adds a new paragraph with style Heading 1, which I can fix by changing it to Normal - but this messes up the hyperlinks later in the document.

For my above example, doing this results in:

Document after adding paragraph after table

Clicking on the bottom hyperlink puts the cursor here:

Cursor position after clicking on the hyperlink

... and updating the cross-reference (with F9) results in:

Document after updating cross-reference


Solution 1:

One solution would be to select the table, Cut it, insert all or some of "New text line 1" (or a single Enter), then Paste it back in after "Text".

Solution 2:

Had the same issue with a document that had a lot of tables immediately before the next heading. Adding text in-between became a headache. Wanted to avoid copying tables, because pasting them feels like gambling with formats and alignments.

Quickest hack I found was:

  1. Add a new last row (simple Enter at the end of the table)
  2. Add a column break before that new row (Ctrl+Shift+Enter at the beginning of the new last row you just created).
  3. Delete the new row, now isolated from the table

The column break will insert an empty paragraph between the main table and last row. Too bad there's not (IDK) a simple way to delete the isolated last row with a quick key combination.

Solution 3:

Here's a simple solution

  • Add a new row to the table
  • Select the row (by clicking on the left side of the page or drag through the whole row)
  • In Table Tools > Layout click on Convert To Text then OK

Now a normal paragraph will be inserted and the heading won't be affected. You can also choose "Paragraph marks" so that multiple lines of text are inserted

Convert Table To Text

On MS Word for Mac it's like this

Convert Table To Text on Mac

Convert Table To Text Mac Menu

Solution 4:

  • Generate a paragraph before the table.
  • Select the whole table. Cut (Ctrl+X).
  • Go to the previous paragraph. Paste (Ctrl+V).
  • Now you will have a paragraph after the table. You can write in it.
  • Update fields to see that you are done.