For many users, the idea of creating a grid of information is surprisingly intimidating. Bad experiences in the past have convinced them that tables always wind up as a maddening mess of unpredictable tabs and misaligned information. PowerPoint 2007, however, has turned tables into a refreshingly simple proposition. You just drop one into place and start entering data. This month and next month, we’ll cover how to create tables and format them to get exactly the right look.

You can insert new tables into PowerPoint slides via two different avenues. You can create one from scratch within PowerPoint itself, or you can import a table you created in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel and modify it as needed.

Creating Tables

Start by clicking the slide that will hold your new table and then click the Insert tab and the Table button. The drop-down box that appears is enough to give even experienced users a moment of pause. It looks similar to a grid of options—but with no options visible. What you’re actually looking at is a pretty slick design tool that lets you drag the mouse to choose the size of table you want. Dragging over boxes in the grid indicates how many rows and columns you want in the table. Look on the active slide for a dynamic table that shifts in size as you highlight different numbers of blocks in the drop-down window. When you’re happy with the table’s size, click the mouse button to insert it into the slide.

If you’re a little more left-brained, you can click Insert Table and just type the number of columns and rows you want. If you’re really right-brained, click the Table button and choose Draw Table. This tool lets you create a completely custom table with row and column boundaries wherever you want them. But the tool isn’t completely self-evident. When you click Draw Table, your cursor becomes a pencil; drag it to define the overall size of the table. Then click Draw Table again to switch to pencil mode in which you can drag to create the row and column boundaries.

Importing Tables

In many cases, the table you want to show during a presentation already exists in Word or Excel. You can quickly pull the table into a PowerPoint slide without re-entering all the data. Start by selecting the table in the original program. In Excel, that means clicking in the table’s upper-left corner and dragging over the entire table to select it. In Word, pass the mouse pointer over the table and look for the four-headed arrow that appears near the table’s upper-left corner. Click it to select the entire table. Now right-click and choose Copy. Then go to the PowerPoint slide that will hold the new table, right-click again, and choose Paste.

Editing Text & Boundaries

Whether you created the table directly in PowerPoint or brought it in from another program, the editing process is the same. Once the table is in place, for example, each cell becomes a text box. To enter information, click in the box and start typing. You can move from cell to cell by pressing TAB. Press SHIFT-TAB to move to the previous cell. To change the font, size, alignment, and other aspects of text, double-click it to select it and use the formatting palette that pops up beside the text.

You can move the boundaries within the table by clicking them and dragging them like the lines in other graphics you work with. Rest the pointer over a border until the pointer becomes a double-headed arrow and drag the border in the appropriate direction.

If you decide you don’t need a line anymore, click the Table Tools tab above the Ribbon and click the Eraser button. Any line you click will disappear. Note that the eraser only removes the small segment of the line you click. If you click a vertical border at a point in Row 3, for example, the border disappears only in that row. If you want to change the color or line weight of a border between cells, use the Pen Color tool on the right side of the Ribbon. Use the drop-down menus to choose your line style, line weight, and pen color. Then click the line you want to change.

Home PowerPoint 2007 Tables Work With Tables: Part I
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