Office 2007 Bible

Table Layout and Design

Word 2007’s Table Tools contextual tab of the Ribbon provides you with most of what you need to create tables that are both aesthetically appealing and functional. Naturally, Word can’t do all of the work. It’s up to you to decide on presentation. When you get stuck for ideas, however, sometimes the Ribbon provides just the touch of inspiration, or just the right suggestion or hint to speed you along your way.

Word’s Table Tools tab has Design and Layout tabs. In many ways, although Design comes first in the Ribbon, Layout logically comes first. Layout determines whether or not your presentation is logical, meaningful to the reader, and ultimately whether it helps whatever point you’re trying to make. After all that, design is icing on the cake.

So far, we’ve looked at a number of basic tools that help you achieve the right structure for your tables. In this section, we’re going to look at how to mold tables into shape and then polish them for presentation.

Note

Many of the Ribbon techniques described in this section are also available in the right-click context menu. If you prefer the context menu to the Ribbon, press Ctrl+F1 to dismiss the Ribbon and go for it!

Modifying table layout

Once you have your basic table, what do you do with it? We all know that situations, ideas, and data change. Let’s look at how to cope with change.

Note that all references to the Layout tab in this section actually refer to the Table Tools Layout tab. We can save ink and ...