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Word 2007 Practice: Insert a Small Table into a Page of Text

This exercise will let you practice some table techniques; resizing a table, merging cells, rotating text, applying a table format, turning on text wrapping for a table, and centering the table on a page.

The premise of the example is an organization that has a one-page promotional handout that includes a block of contact information that is laid out in a table.

Create a Long Document to Practice With

Type =rand(7,4), then Enter. Then push Ctrl + A (to select everything), and on your Ribbon, in the Home tab, Styles group, click Change Styles, then Style Set, then Word 2007. This should give you one page of text to practice on. (The Word 2007 Style Set turned on some paragraph spacing, just makes it easier to see the paragraphs.)

Inserting the Table

1. Please push Ctrl + Home to move the cursor to the beginning of the practice document. (This isn’t necessary, just more convenient for directions.)
2. On the Insert tab, click Tables, then insert a 3-column, 6-row table.
3. Type up the table like this example, using the Tab key to move between cells:

Merge Cells

1. Select the first column (Contact Info) by moving the mouse directly above the column, click when it changes to a solid black down-arrow. In Table Tools, Layout tab, Merge group, click the Merge button. This will change the individual cells into one cell.
2. Now, still in Table Tools, Layout tab, in the Alignment group, click the Text Direction button to rotate the text.
3. With the Contact Info cell still selected, in the Alignment group click the Align Center button.
4. Select the Business Name cell and the cell to the right of it by dragging the I-shaped mouse across them. Click the Merge button. Then, in the Alignment group, click the Align Center button.

AutoFit the Table

With your cursor anywhere in the table, in the Cell Size group, click the AutoFit button, then AutoFit Contents (Table Tools, Layout tab).

Center the Table on the Page

1. With your cursor anywhere in the table, look in Table Tools, Layout tab and click on Properties in the Table group.
2. In the Table Properties box, in the Table tab, find the Text wrapping section. Set the wrapping to Around. This will activate the Positioning button, click it to open the Table Positioning box.
3. In the Table Positioning box change the Horizontal Position: to Right and Relative to: to Margin. Change the Vertical Position: to Center and Relative to: to Margin.
• Note that you can adjust the space around the table by changing the Distance from surrounding text measurements.
4. OK to finish.

Format the Table

With your cursor anywhere in the table, look in Table Tools, Design tab, for Table Styles. Choose whatever style you want.

A change we made on the practice project was to turn off Banded Rows under the Table Style Options tab.

Finishing Touches

• If the rows seem too close together, adjust them by dragging the gridlines on the bottom of each row down a little.
• You can adjust the text in the cells by using the Alignment options, like you did on the Contact Info and Business Name cells. Look in Table Tools, Layout, Alignment.
• If you want to make the font size in the Contact Info and Business Name cells larger, try selecting the text in the cell, then using Ctrl + ] to increase the font size 1 point at a time. Ctrl +[ will decrease the font size.

Bonus – Playing with Themes

Since you have a completed document you can play with, and if you haven’t looked at the Themes built into Word 2007, why don’t you take look. On the Page Layout tab, in the Themes group you can click the Theme button for a list of possible themes to apply to a Word document. The Themes include heading styles, body text styles, and color combinations for things like tables and some graphics. As you hover your mouse over each of the Themes, you should see your document change. Click on Theme you want to use to apply the changes to the entire document.

If the themes don’t seem to change anything, select the entire practice document (Ctrl + A) and in the Home tab, Styles group, click Change Styles, Style Set and choose Word 2007. Try the Themes again.

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