Conflict between titlesec and colortbl

Question

I'm getting a conflict between titlesec and colortbl that I can't seem to fix.

The minimal working example is below. As soon as I put a \section in, pdflatex errors with ! Missing number, treated as zero. <to be read again> } l.9 \section{First Section}

In order to make it work I have to either:

• Not use sections (obviously not feasible)
• Not use my section style (but the journal requires it!)
• Not use coloured tables (but I want to!)

Can you help me make this document with my section heading style included and coloured cells in the table?

Thanks, Sven.

Edited below to include the full set of titlesec and titleformat command I use

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{textcase}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}
\titleformat{\section}
  {\normalfont\bfseries\filcenter}{\thesection}{1em}{\MakeTextUppercase{#1}}
\titlespacing*{\subsection}{0pt}{1em}{0em}
\titlespacing*{\subsubsection}{0pt}{1em}{0em}
\titleformat*{\subsection}{\bfseries}
\titleformat*{\subsubsection}{\bfseries}


\begin{document}

\section{First Section}
\subsection{a sub Sec}
If I define a section (by uncommenting above)... it fails.
\subsubsection{Again}

If I then do one of:
\begin{itemize}
\item{Remove the table (and colortbl package}
\item{Remove my section formatting above}
\end{itemize}
... my doc will compile, but I won't have the style I want.

\begin{table}[!ht]
\begin{tabular}{ |c|l|l } \hline
\rowcolor{red} A    & B     & C     \\ \hline
Hello World         & other     & \cellcolor{blue}stuff\\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{How can I get colored table cells and keep my section heading format?}
\end{table}

\end{document}

For reference in case of package conflicts, here is the list of other packages I'm using in my complete document (but don't seem to affect this particular bug):

\usepackage[left=18mm,top=20mm,right=18mm,bottom=25mm,includehead,nofoot,headheight=0pt,headsep=5mm]{geometry}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{dcolumn}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{subfig}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage[capitalise,noabbrev]{cleveref}
\usepackage{epstopdf}
\usepackage[absolute]{textpos}

Answer 1

There's no conflict between the packages; the problem is that \MakeUppercase requires an argument; you can overcome this by using the extended syntax for \titleformat and the explicit option for titlesec to have explicit access to the title:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{textcase}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}
\titleformat{\section}
  {\normalfont\bfseries\filcenter}{\thesection}{1em}{\MakeTextUppercase{#1}}

\begin{document}

\section{First Section}

\begin{table}[!ht]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{ |c|l|l } \hline
\rowcolor{red} A    & B     & C     \\ \hline
Hello World         & other     & \cellcolor{blue}stuff\\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Problem solved!}
\end{table}

\end{document}

Notice also that I used \MakeTextUppercase from the textcase package (it's safer than the standard \MakeUppercase in titles).

After the edit to the original question, here's now the code with the necessary modifications for the other sectional units:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{textcase}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}

\titleformat{\section}
  {\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries\filcenter}{\thesection}{1em}{\MakeTextUppercase{#1}}
\titleformat{\subsection}
  {\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}{\thesubsection}{1em}{#1}
\titlespacing*{\subsection}{0pt}{1em}{0em}
\titlespacing*{\subsubsection}{0pt}{1em}{0em}

\begin{document}

\section{Test Section}
\subsection{Test Subsection}
\subsubsection{Test Subsubsection}
\begin{table}[!ht]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{ |c|l|l } \hline
\rowcolor{red} A    & B     & C     \\ \hline
Hello World         & other     & \cellcolor{blue}stuff\\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Problem solved!}
\end{table}

\end{document}