Tagged table lines

written by Stefan Brechbühl
last updated on December 21, 2019

When exporting a table from Word 2013, the lines of a table are set within <Span> tags. <Span> tags are not allowed inside a <TR> (table row) on the same level as the <TD> tags (table cell). In addition, table lines must be marked as artifacts and must not be tagged.

Issue detected in PDFs made from: #

  • Microsoft Word 2013 for Windows

PAC 3 error message #

Invalid use of a “Span” structure element

Failure Conditions of the Matterhorn Protocol #

01-001 Artifact is tagged as real content. (→ manual testing)

09-004 A table-related structure element is used in a way that does not conform to the syntax defined in ISO 32000-1, Table 337. (→ automatic testing)

Manual approach in Acrobat #

  1. The path element must be marked as Artifact. Right-click on the path element inside the navigation pane “Tags” and choose “Change Tag to Artifact…”.
  2. Delete the empty <Span> tag afterwards.

See also “Create and check artifacts in Acrobat”.