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About this lesson

Tables provide a structure of columns and rows to help the user line up data, similar to a spreadsheet layout, but within a Word document.

Exercise files

Download the Word document used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Creating Tables.docx
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Quick reference

Creating Tables

Tables provide a structure of columns and rows to help the user line up data, similar to a spreadsheet layout, but within a Word document.

When to Use

Often, tables are used to layout contact lists inside a Word document, and a calendar would be a table layout as well.

Instructions

  1. To view the Table Options, go to the Insert Ribbon, Table. 
  2. The bottom option is the fastest: Quick Tables.
  • The Designs are ready and you can easily edit the table with your own data.
  1.  
  • Add Rows to a Table: Mouse to a row and click the + tool that appears between the rows. 

 

  • To move a Row, use the keyboard combination of Alt+Shift+Up Arrow and Alt+Shift+Down Arrow

 

  1. To Position the Table on the page:
  • Use the Paragraph Alignment buttons. 

 

  • Use the Ruler to adjust the column widths.

  1. Convert Text to Table (or Vice Versa):
  • Select the text to Convert, i.e.

                      Name              Phone                             Address                       City, St, Zip                   Notes

                      Jane Doe        123-4567                        123 Marigold St.         City, St, Zip                   Staffing Dept

  1.  
  • Insert Ribbon, Table, Convert Text to Table. 

  1.  

Name

Phone

Address

City, St, Zip

Notes

Jane Doe

123-4567

123 Marigold St.

City, St, Zip

Staffing Dept

 

  1. Lock in the Row Height so it won't auto adjust and skew the layout:
  • Right-click the table and select Table Properties to control the size, alignment, and indentation of the table. 


          

  • You can also tell it never to auto adjust again:
  • Right-click, Table Properties, Table tab, Options at bottom, and un-check "Automatically resize to fit contents"

 

      6. Keep your hard-work and formatted Table as a Quick Part to save you time in the future:

  • Select the Table.
  • Click the Insert Ribbon, Text group, Quick Parts, Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery.
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  • 00:05 When you're creating tables,
  • 00:06 sometimes it's very nice to already have data on your screen.
  • 00:10 Sometimes you don't have data on the screen, it's up to you.
  • 00:12 But I do wanna do my show hide button, so you can see what's going on here.
  • 00:15 This is basically typed data with tabs in between to create the visual of columns.
  • 00:22 Well as you and I know, anyone could go rogue with this and get rid of one tab and
  • 00:27 destroy your entire thing.
  • 00:28 So I'm gonna Ctrl + Z, and let's go ahead and apply a table.
  • 00:32 First of all, you need to know where tables are located,
  • 00:34 they're on the insert ribbon right over here.
  • 00:36 We have tables, and I can literally click and drag and tell it how many columns or
  • 00:40 how many rows I want.
  • 00:41 I'm gonna slowly back out of that, so I don't choose any of them.
  • 00:44 Right over here, I can insert a table and type in how many columns, rows,
  • 00:48 I can draw a table, Excel spreadsheet or the quick tables.
  • 00:52 Now the quick tables is kind of nice,
  • 00:54 because here you have some pre-formatted tables with the color already arranged.
  • 00:58 So I'm gonna go ahead and click this one so it drops in here.
  • 01:01 Now it comes with the sample data as well and
  • 01:04 I don't necessarily wanna keep this, so I would have to retype but
  • 01:07 the nice here is the structured laid out and the colors already laid out.
  • 01:11 Well, instead of doing that, I wanna take my existing text and
  • 01:14 convert it to a table.
  • 01:15 So I'm gonna go ahead and select my existing text, go to my insert,
  • 01:19 go to my table and it is right down here, convert table to text, also vice versa.
  • 01:24 I can take that table that I just dropped in there that's blue at the bottom and
  • 01:28 convert that to text, bring it out of its table structure.
  • 01:31 So you're not stuck, you can do this both ways, I'll go ahead and
  • 01:34 click Text to table.
  • 01:36 Fixed column with definitely separated by tabs, hit OK and, there we have it.
  • 01:41 Well now at this point, maybe there's some structure I could do right over here.
  • 01:45 I've got some shading, I could add shading to the entire thing,
  • 01:48 maybe I just want to put shading on the top rows.
  • 01:51 Let's select the top row and add shading to the top row.
  • 01:54 I can even select the entire table with this little
  • 01:57 tool right up here in a top-left corner, that's your table selection tool.
  • 02:00 I could click that and I could come over here and
  • 02:03 tell it to get rid of the borders or whatever you want.
  • 02:06 You can change anything you wanna change, I'm gonna tell it no borders.
  • 02:09 Even though I chose no borders,
  • 02:10 I can still see the outline, it's just those outlines won't print.
  • 02:14 All right, see, you got a lot of work here in the reference document in this lesson.
  • 02:19 I talked a lot about going into the Table Properties and
  • 02:22 setting some things up in here.
  • 02:24 Something you need to know right away is how to add a new row.
  • 02:27 Float your mouse within the table on the left, you can see this little plus sign,
  • 02:31 Click that, we get a new row.
  • 02:33 But what if you want to readjust the column widths,
  • 02:36 notice my ruler right up here.
  • 02:38 Each one of these little gray grids is a margin marker so
  • 02:42 we have margins around all these columns.
  • 02:44 If we wanna add a new column, I simply float my mouse above any column,
  • 02:48 see that black arrow?
  • 02:49 Right-click and, of course, we get insert and then Insert,
  • 02:52 and then insert columns to the right or to the left, and you can insert.
  • 02:56 Of course, I'm gonna Ctrl + Z that, and so now the last thing I'm wanna do is, after
  • 03:00 you spend all this time creating it, do you actually want to lose all that work?
  • 03:04 Absolutely not, so what we're going to do is, go to the insert.
  • 03:08 Way over here, we have the text section, and one of them says quick parts.
  • 03:12 Here we go, quick parts, when I click on quick parts,
  • 03:14 I can save selection to the quick part gallery, and I'll never lose this again.
  • 03:19 So go to all hard work once with your tables and then,
  • 03:22 just put in quick parts to use it forever more.
  • 03:26 Okay, thank you.

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