“Merge cells” and “Split cells”

In some cases, it may sometimes be useful to “Merge cells”, for example the title of our table, when it appears that this is what is too long for a cell.

To do this, first select the next or adjoining cells.

In the “Layout” contextual tab, click the “Merge Cells” button.

In order to merge cells, there must be at least two adjacent cells which are selected.

 

To split a cell, click the “Split Cells” button from the “Layout” contextual tab

 

This opens a dialog window where you enter the number of columns and the number of rows into which you want the cell to be divided.
Click OK when you’ve entered.

 

Change Text Direction

To change the direction of text in your table, first select the text and click the “Text Direction” button from the “Layout” contextual tab in the “Ribbon”.

This opens a drop-down menu with four options.
The first is “Horizontal”, which is the default setting.
The next three seem obvious to me .

If this is not the case, try them all atleast once.
You can always go back to the previous setting by clicking on the “Undo” button in the “Ribbon” or clicking on the “Horizontal”, which will set the text back in the standard direction.

 

Set row height and column width

To set a different height or width for the rows and columns, click the mouse pointer over the edge of the cell.
When this changes into two-arrow, click and drag it to the desired height or width.

A second way is by using the two fill-in boxes in the “Cell Size” group in the “Layout” contextual tab.
Click the up or down arrows next to the textbox, or type a number in the box.

To set all cells of equal size, click the “Distribute Rows” or “Distribute Columns” buttons respectively.
These buttons are to the right of the textbox in the “Cell Size” group.

To set the width or height of an the entire table, select the table, click and drag to the edge where four dots are.
Or click the up or down arrows next to the textbox in the “Table Size”.

Table Styles

“Table Styles” allow us to format our table in a single run.
It is easy and saves a lot of time.

Just like in ” Excel” and “Word”, we find the “Table Styles” in “PowerPoint” under the “Design” contextual tab in the “Ribbon”.
The cool thing is, the “Table Styles” option also features a “Live Preview” (1).
So all you have to do to see a preview is, move the mouse pointer over the style. When you are satisfied with a style, click in the menu.

With the right arrow (2) next to the styles, you can navigate between the different styles. Clicking the bottom arrow opens a drop-down menu with more “Table Styles”.

Then you have various options for “Table Styles”, on the right side of the “Ribbon”.
You should try all these. They are really great to enhance your presentation.

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