4.11: Formatting Tables
Learning Outcomes
- Apply table styles and formatting.
Once the table is created, you can make the table more interesting to look at and easier to read by applying formatting such as colors, spacing, and borders. Click somewhere in your table, and some new menu options will appear in the top menu, Design and Layout.
There are many options in the Design menu. A table style will do a lot of formatting for you. Click on the Table Styles dropdown menu (circled in the screenshot above) and hover over each style to see a preview of it. Click on a style to apply it to the table.
You can add borders to individual cells, rows, or columns. Select the cells, then go to the Borders area of the menu in the top-right corner to customize the border settings. In the screenshot below:
- This changes the type of border. There are solid, dotted, and dashed borders to choose from.
- This changes the width or thickness of the border. The smaller the point, the thinner the line.
- This controls which side or sides of the cell the border appears on. From here, you could make only vertical borders appear, only outside borders appear, and so on.
It’s a good idea to create a table in Microsoft Word and fiddle with the table design settings yourself. Remember, you can always hit Ctrl+Z (Command+Z on Mac) to undo a previous action.
Contributors and Attributions
- Formatting Tables. Authored by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution