You cannot change the background color of a cell after you use AutoFormat to format the table in Expression Web, in SharePoint Designer 2007, or in FrontPage 2003

In Microsoft Expression Web, in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, or in Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, you use the AutoFormat feature to format a table. Then, you try to change the background color of a single cell by adding a bgcolor attribute to a <td> tag. When you do this, the background color of the cell does not change.

This issue occurs because the AutoFormat feature for tables uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to control cell color. For more information about CSS, see the "About styles" topic in the FrontPage Help files.

In Expression Web or in SharePoint Designer 2007, see the following Help topics:

• Apply a custom style sheet to a SharePoint site
• Create HTML Editor styles

To resolve this issue, customize table background colors by modifying the properties of the table. For more information about how to do this in FrontPage 2003, see the "Set the background properties of a table" topic in the FrontPage Help files.

Note You can also directly edit the HTML code that controls the background color by modifying the table's style attribute. For more information about how to do this in FrontPage 2003, see the "Change properties for an individual HTML tag" topic in the FrontPage Help files.

To customize the background colors of a table in Expression Web or in SharePoint Designer 2007, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the table, and then click Table Properties.
2. In the Table Properties dialog box, select a color from the Color palette in the Background area.
3. Click Apply.

To customize the background colors of a data view, use conditional formatting. For more information about how to do this in FrontPage 2003, see the "Add or remove conditional formatting for a Data View" topic in the FrontPage Help files.

In Expression Web or in SharePoint Designer 2007, see the "Apply conditional formatting to a Data View" Help topic.