Creating “Tables”

For those who have never worked with “Microsoft Excel” or any other spreadsheet, I’ll try to explain what a “Table” is.
A “Table” consists of columns and rows.
The point of intersection of a column and a row is called a cell.

We place our data in a data cell.
To build a good structure of your “Table”, place one type of data in the column, and the data in a row.

To insert a “Table”, we click the “Insert Table” button in the “Standard toolbar”, and click and drag the popup window to get the number of rows and columns we desire. We let the mouse loose, and the “Table” is inserted in our “Document”.
Whether we click the “Insert Table” button in the toolbar or click “Table” button in the menubar, give the number of columns and rows in the dialog box and click OK.

To enter data in the cells, place the cursor in the cell and start typing.
To jump from cell to cell, use the tab key on your keyboard.

To add a row to our “Table”, place the cursor in the cell at the bottom right of the “Table”, and click the tab key on your keyboard.

In the same way that we format normal text, we can also format text in “Tables”.
To format the “Tables” click “Table” – “Table AutoFormat” (“Table Auto Format”) in the menu bar.
In the dialog that appears, we can give style to our “Table” by clicking on the “New” button, or select an existing layout and click “Change”.

Click “Apply” (“Apply”) when you’re happy with your settings.

Selecting “Table” Objects

We can set properties for individual objects such as text, a cell, row, or column, in our “Table” .
To select a cell, we place the mouse pointer on the lower left corner and click.
To select a row, we place the mouse pointer on the left side of the row and click.
We select a column in the same way, but we put the mouse pointer on top of the column, when it turns into an arrow pointing down, we click the left mouse button.
Selecting text is done in the same way as text in our “Document”.

In 2000, 2003 and XP versions, we can select the entire “Table” by placing our pointer at the top left of the “Table”, until it turns into a four-headed arrow.
Then click to select the entire “Table”.

We can also use the dropdown menu of different objects of our “Table”.
Click on “Table” (“Table”) – “Select” (“Select”) in the menu bar, and make your choice from “Table”, “Column”, “Row” or “Cell”.

Adding and Removing “Rows” and “Columns”

To delete “Columns” or “Rows”, we first select the row or column, and then click “Table” (“Table”) – “Delete” (“Delete”) – “Columns” (or “Rows”).
To add “Rows” or “Columns” we do the same but now choose “Insert” (“Insert”).
Choose exactly what you want from the list : left or right columns or rows above or below.

Merge and split cells

We can combine multiple cells into one large cell, or we can split a large cell into multiple cells.
To merge cells, we select the cells and choose “Table” – “Merge Cells” (“Merge cells”) in the menu bar.
To divde a cell, we select the cell and choose “Table” – “Split cells” (“Split Cells”) in the menu bar. In the dialog that appears, we give the number of rows and columns.
And click OK.

Adjusting Column width and height

We can change the height and width of rows and columns by placing our mouse pointer between two columns or rows.
When this turns into a double-arrow icon, click and drag it to the desired height or width.

Convert a “Table” to text

In “Word”, we have the ability to convert a “Table” to text and vice versa.
To do this we select the “Table” or the text that we want to convert, and choose “Table” – “Convert” – “Table to Text” (or “Text to Table”) in the menu bar.
In the dialog that appears, we choose Tabs (this is the most obvious), and click OK.

Result:

And back from “Text to Table”:

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