Looking at the XML under the hood of Word ... how to identify columnhead

Hi Folks,

When I create a table in Word I want to explicitly indicate that “this cell is a column header”. See screenshot at bottom of this message.

You probably know that under-the-hood of Word is XML. I will be writing software to process the XML, so I need something in the XML which indicates that a cell is a column header. Bold-facing the first row of a table is a good visual cue to a human reader that the items in the row are column headers, but bold-facing is of no help to software.

I did some Googling and found this suggestion for indicating a column header: highlight the first row, right-mouse click, select Table Properties, click on the Row tab, select “Repeat as header row at the top of each page” and unselect “Allow row to break across pages”.

Okay, I did that and then examined the XML that was generated. See below for the XML of the first row of the table. As far as I can tell, the <w:tblHeader/> element is used to indicate “This row contains the column headers”. Do you agree? Does Word provide any other way to identify column headers? /Roger

<w:tr ...>
    <w:trPr>
        <w:cantSplit/>
        <w:tblHeader/>
    </w:trPr>
    <w:tc>
        <w:tcPr>
            <w:tcW w:w="0" w:type="auto"/>
        </w:tcPr>
        <w:p ...>
            <w:pPr>
                <w:rPr>
                    <w:b/>
                    <w:bCs/>
                </w:rPr>
            </w:pPr>
            <w:proofErr w:type="spellStart"/>
            <w:r w:rsidRPr="002C7789">
                <w:rPr>
                    <w:b/>
                    <w:bCs/>
                </w:rPr>
                <w:t>Vehicle_Type</w:t>
            </w:r>
            <w:proofErr w:type="spellEnd"/>
        </w:p>
    </w:tc>
    <w:tc>
        <w:tcPr>
            <w:tcW w:w="0" w:type="auto"/>
        </w:tcPr>
        <w:p ...>
            <w:pPr>
                <w:rPr>
                    <w:b/>
                    <w:bCs/>
                </w:rPr>
            </w:pPr>
            <w:r w:rsidRPr="002C7789">
                <w:rPr>
                  <w:b/>
                    <w:bCs/>
                </w:rPr>
                <w:t>Sensitivity</w:t>
            </w:r>
        </w:p>
    </w:tc>
</w:tr>