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Hi Folks, Welcome to Unit Four – Table Basics You’ll be glad to know you get a bit of a break from keying large documents in this Unit. Tables show a great deal of useful information using the minimum amount of text and space. In this Unit I’ll cover the content in Lessons 41 – 44. You will create simple tables, modify the way your table displays information, and customize the structure of various tables. As with the business documents you’ve created during this course, you will follow basic format guidelines. These guidelines ensure you are able to create tables with a consistent, professional look. Of course in the real world you may need to create tables that don’t follow our format guidelines; you’ll learn advanced formatting techniques to satisfy these situations. As usual, your textbook does a great job of explaining the steps you’ll need to create and modify tables. This text is designed as a supplement to help you where students often have difficulty. Using Tables to Display Information Tables are a great way to organize information in a Word document. Numeric information that is difficult to understand, when laid out in paragraph format, can be easy to understand at a glance in a table. For example the following information is difficult to understand: Stages of Life Span Development The stages of life span development in people can be broken down into eight stages. Each stage is related to an approximate age range. The Infancy stage lasts from birth to approximately one year old. The Toddler stage lasts from approximately one year to approximately three years old. The Preschool stage lasts from approximately three years to approximately five years old. The School Age stage lasts from approximately six years to approximately twelve years old. The Adolescence stage lasts from approximately thirteen years to approximately nineteen years old. The Early Adulthood stage lasts from approximately twenty years to approximately thirty nine years old. The Middle Adulthood stage lasts from approximately forty years to approximately sixty five years old. The Late Adulthood stage lasts from approximately sixty five on up. When you put this same information in a table, the content is quick and easy to read. Stages of Life Span Development
When numeric content is very complex or when you want to perform complex calculations on simple data, you should not use Word, you should use a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel. Word is great for simple content, Excel is the program to use for large complex sets of information. Parts of a Basic Table On page 143 your textbook begins to describe the parts of a table, and how to create a table. Below is a more information on the parts of a table.
Your textbook does a super job of explaining the two basic ways of inserting a table on page 144, study this page carefully. Table Formatting While a plain table improves the readability of the content, attractive formatting can make the content even easier to understand. Which of the following tables is easier to read?
For me, the first table is easier to read. Because you are comparing information in the left column to information in the right column, having the information closer together makes the table easier to read. Most of the formatting you undertake is not done to torment you, but done to make information easier to read. Formatting tables include changing the appearance of the following: Z Content (the information you key into each cell) Z Column width (how wide each column appears) Z Row height (how tall each row appears) Z Border color and thickness (lines that go around each cell). When you apply character formatting in a regular paragraph you must select (highlight) the text before you can apply the format. When formatting tables it’s the same concept, you must select the table component before you can control its format. On page 145 your textbook explains how to select entire tables, columns and rows. Study this page carefully. Most formatting errors occur because the correct table component was not completely selected. On page 146 your book does a great job of explaining how to change column width using the mouse, study this section carefully. Using the Table Properties Dialog Box Often using your mouse to control a table is challenging. Some people find it easier to use the Table Properties Dialog box to control the placement of an entire table, the width of the columns, the height of the rows. Experiment using this dialog box to make changes to your tables.
Selecting the Row tab allows you to specify exactly how tall a row will appear. Remember you need to select the rows before selecting Table Properties from the Table menu.
When you select the Column tab you can specify exactly how wide each column will appear.
Table Formatting Guidelines Table format guidelines appear on page 146 of your textbook. Follow these guidelines for all the tables you create for this course, unless the directions specifically indicate a different format. The only change to these guidelines I suggest is for guideline number 4: “Change the line spacing of the table to 1.5.” I suggest instead of setting line spacing at 1.5”, you do the following: 1. Select the entire table. 2. Select Paragraph… from the Format menu. 3. From the Paragraph menu set the Spacing Before and Spacing After to 3 or 6 depending on what looks best in your table. 4. Click OK.
Decimal Tabs When you need to line up numbers that contain decimals, like dollar amounts ($17.50) in a column you should align your text at the decimal point. In other words all the decimal points must line up. Again, this makes the information easier to read. See the examples below.
To set a decimal tab: 1. Select Print Layout from the View menu. 2. Display the ruler by selecting Ruler from the View menu. 3. Select (highlight) the cells with the decimal numbers you want to align.
4.
Select the decimal tab
marker from the tab selector button, by clicking the button until the following
icon is showing:
5.
Determine which part
of the ruler controls the column with the decimal numbers.
6.
Click on the ruler to
place the decimal tab, the decimal numbers should automatically align at the
decimal point. The numbers are aligned based on the decimal point, the information is easier to read. Tables and Borders Toolbar and Table AutoFormat Page 149 of your textbook does a great job of explaining the basics of the toolbar, how to shade cells and how to apply preset formats using the AutoFormat feature. Read this page carefully. You will use the Tables and Borders Toolbar in the next section. Revise Tables Even with careful planning you will often need to change the number of columns or number of rows in a table after you’ve begun adding content. You change the structure by adding and deleting columns and rows, and by merging (combining) and splitting cells. Merging cells means you take a two or more cells and make them into only one cell. For example, remember the first table we looked at? FIRST TABLE
TABLE WITH CELLS A1 AND B1 MERGED
Now this may not be exactly how you hoped the table would look but you can modify the cell contents and improve the look, for example by removing the paragraph marker after the A1 and adding some text the table looks much clearer.
Beginning on page 152 your textbook gives you excellent step by step directions for inserting and deleting rows and columns, and also merging and splitting cells. Read this section carefully. Another formatting technique that allows you to improve the readability of your table is the cell alignment feature. You control how the contents of a cell is aligned in relation to both the right and left side of each cell, and the top and bottom side of each cell. The following table shows your choices. Keep in mind that the vertical adjustment only appears when the row height is greater that the height of the cell contents.
Change Appearance of Tables Beginning on page 156 your book leads you through rotating text in a cell, and changing table borders and lines. All the directions in this section are very good, so read carefully. Make sure you understand the difference between Gridlines and Borders. Borders are lines that you control. You could have a different color, width or line style for each side of a cell. It would be ugly but you could do it:
Borders will show up when you print your table. If the table shown above had the borders changed to white or no color the table would appear to have no cells and would look like this:
Gridlines are light gray lines that appear around each cell in your table. They show the underlying structure of your table. Gridlines do not show when you print. Gridlines are turned on and off by selecting Hide Gridlines or Show Gridlines from the Table menu.
Remember Gridlines show the structure of the table, they do not print. Borders are formatting features. Borders print with the table. You can change the color width and style of each border of each cell in a table.
Summary Well folks, that’s the mini lecture for the tables Unit. As always if you have any questions please email me at lslater@ednet.rvc.cc.il.us. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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