Use of \hiderowcolors & \showrowcolors within LyX

Question

Loading the xcolor package with the [table] option provides the command(s) \rowcolors(*) for alternate table row coloring. Any attempt, however, to use \hiderowcolors and \showrowcolors inside table rows within from LyX -- both in- and outisde a LyX table-float -- results in failing to compile a PDF. The error message is: Undefined control sequence.

It seems that there is no discussion/question upon this on either LyX-Users' mailing list or tex.stackexchange itself. It certainly is preferable to resolve this in a clean way, i.e. with a correct usage of the above mentioned commands.

Answer 1

I suspect that you simply haven't left any space between the ERT containing \hiderowcolors/\showrowcolors, so that TeX reads the letter(s) after the command as part of the command. E.g. if you put \hiderowcolors at the start of a table cell, and then write text right after the ERT, without spaces, TeX will see the command \hiderowcolorstext, which is undefined.

Solution: Put a pair of empty braces after \hiderowcolors, within the ERT. (You could also add a space after the ERT, but that will lead to wrong alignment.)