Computed values not working inside HTML

My application is a Notes form with an extended table design. Many of the columns of the table may be empty/blank, and I want to suppress the display of the column if indeed it is blank. Since using a Notes table format will not allow this, I’ve rewritten the table in HTML with computed fields and/or computed text inside the HTML pass-through, and for whatever reason, the computations do NOT recompute when one of the factors is changed or the document is refreshed (Notes client - this is not a web app). Has anyone else observed this behavior? Is there any way of bypassing it? It’s really annoying.