Inserting columns and rows

To insert a column, such as phone number, place the cursor in the column beside which you want to insert a new column, and click the “Insert Left” or “Insert Right” buttons.

The same is the case while adding a row, only, the options are changed to either “Insert Above” or “Insert Below”.
This is quite logical.
If you want to add multiple columns or rows, select the number of columns or rows, and click the above buttons.

To add a row to the bottom of your table, you do not need to use all these buttons, you only need to press the tab key on your keyboard while clicking your last cell. The cell at the bottom right portion of the table is selected .

Adjusting column width and row height

The column width and height, can be modified in a variety of ways.
One way is by moving the mouse pointer on the border between two columns or rows (1), and when it changes into a two-headed arrow, click and drag it until your desired width or height is reached.

A second way is by using the “Table Row Height” and “Table Column Width” buttons(2). To do this, place the cursor in the cell where you want to adjust the row height or column width, and click the upward or downward pointing arrows.
You can also manually enter a number for width / column height in the corresponding box.

A third way is to make use of the “AutoFit” (3) button.
When we click it we have three options:
1: “Autofit content” (adjusted to the content of the cells)
2: “AutoFit Window” (adjusted to the width of the window)
3: “Fixed Column Width”

Distributing columns or rows evenly:

The size of the columns or rows can be distributed evenly and, we use the “Split Cells/table” or “split buttons” in the contextual tab, “Layout”, under “Table Tools”.
This is number four in the above image.

Merge or split cells

To merge cells, select the cells you want to merge, and click the “Merge Cells” button, in the “Layout” contextual tab under “Table Tools”.

To convert a merged cell back to a split cell, select the merged cell and click the “Split Cells” button, in the “Layout” contextual tab under “Table Tools”.
In the dialog window that appears, specify the number of rows and / or columns.

You can merge all the cells as long as all of them are adjacent.

Alignment of cells:

By default, the contents of a cell, are aligned horizontally and vertically to the top left.
Depending on the width and height of the cell, this can be changed by clicking on the alignment buttons, found in the extra tab, “Layout”.

To change the alignment, select the cell or cells and click the alignment button of your choice.

Changing the text direction:

In Word, we have the option of chaging the direction of the text.
To change the direction of the text, select the text and click the “Text Direction” button. You’ll find this under the “Layout” contextual tab under “Table Tools”.
Whenever you click this button, the direction of the text will be changed.

Table Styles:

By making use of “Table styles”, we can easily and quickly set the format of our table.
The “Table Styles” is found in the “Design” contextual tab under “Table Tools”. If you click on the “Up”, “Bottom”, and “More” buttons several available styles will be displayed.
This option also offers a “Live Preview” (1).

Clicking on one style, inserts this style to our table.
Once a style is applied, you can turn various style options on and off by clicking the boxes in the “Table Style Options”.

Repeated display of row names:

Depending on the table and the information in the table, it can occur that our table spills over to several pages.
To be able to, precisely identify, what is to be placed in which column, we can display the title of the column on each page.
To do this, first select the top row or rows, and then click the “Repeat header rows” in the “Layout” contextual tab under “Table Tools”.
This places the selected row titles(s) from your table, at the top of each page.

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