Formatting Table Cells

Although table styles provide a rough cut on the formatting, you might like to fine-tune your table formatting as well. In the following sections you learn how to adjust various aspects of the table's appearance.

Changing Row Height and Column Width

You might want a row to be a different height or a column a different width than others in the table. To resize a row or column, follow these steps:

1. Position the mouse pointer on the border below the row or to the right of the column that you want to resize. The mouse pointer turns into a line with arrows on each side of it.

2. Hold down the mouse button as you drag the row or column to a new height or width. A dotted line appears showing where it will go.

3. Release the mouse button.

You can also specify an exact height or width measurement using the Height and Width boxes in the Cell Size group on the Layout tab. Select the row(s) or column(s) to affect, and then enter sizes in inches or use the increment buttons, as shown in Figure 9.11.

Figure 9.11: Set a precise size for a row or column.

The Distribute Rows Evenly and Distribute Columns Evenly buttons in the Cell Size group (see Figure 9.11) adjust each row or column in the selected range so that the available space is occupied evenly among them. This is handy especially if you have drawn the table yourself rather than allowed PowerPoint to create it initially. If PowerPoint creates the table, the rows and columns are already of equal height and width by default.

Table Margins and Alignment

Remember, PowerPoint slides do not have any margins per se; everything is in a frame. An individual cell does have internal margins, however.

You can specify the internal margins for cells using the Margins button on the Layout tab, as follows:

1. Select the cells to which the setting should apply. To apply settings to the entire table, select the entire table.

2. On the Layout tab, click the Margins button. A menu of margin presets opens.

3. Click one of the presets or choose Custom Margins, and then follow these steps:

   1. In the Cell Text Layout dialog box, set the Left, Right, Top, and Bottom margin settings, as shown in Figure 9.12.

   2. Click OK.

Figure 9.12: You can set the internal margins on an individual cell basis for each side of the cell.

Applying Borders

The border lines around each cell are very important because they separate the data in each cell. By default (without a table style) there's a 1-point border around each side of each cell, but you can make some or all borders thicker, a different line style (dashed, for example), a different color, or remove them altogether to create your own effects. Here are some ideas:

• To make items appear to "float" in multiple columns on the slide (that is, to make it look as if they are not really in a table at all-just lined up extremely well), remove all table borders.

• To create a header row at the top without using the Quick Style Options, make the border beneath the first row of cells darker or thicker than the others.

• To make certain rows or columns appear as if they are outside of the table, turn off their borders on all sides except the side that faces the other cells.

• To make certain items appear as if they have been crossed off a list, format those cells with diagonal borders. This creates the effect of an X running through each cell. These diagonal lines are not really borders in the sense that they don't go around the edge of the cell, but they're treated as borders in PowerPoint.

When you apply a top, bottom, left, or right border, those positions refer to the entire selected block of cells if you have more than one cell selected. For example, suppose you select two adjacent cells in a row and apply a left border. The border applies only to the leftmost of the two cells. If you want the same border applied to the line between the cells too, you must apply an inside vertical border.

To apply a border, follow these steps:

1. Select the cell(s) that you want to affect.

2. In the Draw Borders group on the Table Tools Design tab, select a line style, width, and color from the Pen Style, Pen Weight, and Pen Color drop-down lists. See Figure 9.13.

   
   Figure 9.13: Use the Draw Borders group's lists to set the border's style, thickness, and color.

   EXPERT TIP 

   Try to use theme colors rather than fixed colors whenever possible, so that if you change to a different color theme later, the colors you choose now won't clash.

3. Open the Borders button's menu in the Table Styles group and choose the sides of the selected area to which the new settings should apply. See Figure 9.14. For example, to apply the border the bottom of the selected area, click Bottom Border.

   If you want to remove all borders from all sides, choose No Border from the menu.

4. If necessary, repeat step 3 to apply the border to other sides of the selection. Some of the choices on the Borders button's menu apply to only one side; others apply to two or more at once.

Figure 9.14: Select the side(s) to apply borders to the chosen cells.

Applying Fills

By default, table cells have a transparent background so that the color of the slide beneath shows through. When you apply a table style, as you learned earlier in the chapter, the style specifies a background color-or in some cases, multiple background colors depending on the Quick Style Options you choose for special treatment of certain rows or columns.

You can also manually change the fill for a table to make it either a solid color or a special fill effect. You can apply this fill to individual cells, or you can apply a background fill for the entire table.

Filling Individual Cells

Each individual cell has its own fill setting; in this way a table is like a collection of individual object frames, rather than a single object. To set the fill color for one or more cells, follow these steps:

1. Select the cell(s) to affect, or to apply the same fill color to all cells, select the table's outer frame.

2. On the Table Tools Design tab, click the down arrow next to the Shading button to open its palette.

3. Select the desired color or fill effect. See Figure 9.15.

Figure 9.15: Apply a fill effect to the selected cell(s).

CROSS-REF 

For more on the various effects, see Chapter 10. Also see "Filling a Table with a Picture" later in this chapter for some issues involving picture fills specific to tables.

EXPERT TIP 

For a semi-transparent, solid-color fill, first apply the fill and then right-click the cell and choose Format Shape. In the Format Shape dialog box, drag the Transparency slider. For some types of fills, you can also set the transparency when you initially apply the fill.

Applying an Overall Table Fill

New in PowerPoint 2007, you can apply a solid color fill to the entire table that is different from the fill applied to the individual cells. The table's fill color is visible only in cells in which the individual fill is set to No Fill (or a semi-transparent fill, in which case it blends).

To apply a fill for the entire table, open the Shading button's menu and point to Table Background, and then choose a color, as shown in Figure 9.16.

Figure 9.16: Apply a fill to the table's background.

To test the new background, select some cells and choose No Fill for their fill color. The background color appears in those cells. If you want to experiment further, try applying a semi-trans-parent fill to some cells, and see how the color of the background blends with the color of the fill.

Filling a Table with a Picture

When you fill one or more cells with a picture, each cell gets its own individual copy of it. For example, if you fill a table with a picture of a dog, and the table has six cells, you get six dogs as shown in Figure 9.17.

Figure 9.17: When you apply a picture fill to a table, each cell gets its own copy.

If you want a single copy of the picture to fill the entire area behind the table, there are two ways you can do this. One is to set the picture to be tiled like a texture. Follow these steps:

1. Apply the picture to all of the cells in the table, or to the range of cells in which you want it to appear. To do this:

   1. Select the cells, and then right-click the selection and choose Format Shape.

   2. Click Fill, and then click Picture or Texture Fill.

   3. Click the File button, select the picture file, and click Insert.

2. Mark the Tile Picture as Texture check box. See Figure 9.18.

Figure 9.18: Set the picture to be tiled as a texture.

At this point, the picture fills the table without regard for cell borders, but it probably doesn't fill it exactly. Depending on the original size of the graphic and the size of the table, you probably either see a truncated version of the picture or a tiled version that does not match up with the cell borders. Figure 9.19 shows some examples.

Figure 9.19: The picture is too large (top) or too small (bottom) for the table fill.

To adjust the picture, use the Tiling Options in the Format Shape dialog box, shown in Figure 9.18:

• Adjust the position of the picture within the table by changing the Offset X and Offset Y values. These are measured in points, and move the picture to the right (X) and down (Y).

• Change the sizing of the picture by adjusting the Scale X and Scale Y values. The smaller the number, the smaller the picture-but don't go too small or the picture will start to tile (unless that's what you want, of course).

• Change the way the picture aligns in the table by changing the Alignment.

• (Optional) Set a mirror type if desired so that if you do have multiple copies tiled within the frame, each copy is flipped horizontally and/or vertically. (This is not common.)

It can take some time to get the picture optimally adjusted so that it exactly fits in the allotted space. If all of that seems like more than you want to mess with, there is an alternative method: make the table transparent and place the picture behind it on the slide. Here's how:

1. Place the picture on the slide by choosing Insert Picture.

2. Select the picture and choose Format Send to Back. (If the picture is the only object on the slide, this command is unavailable, but the command is unnecessary in that case.)

3. Create a plain unformatted table on top of the picture.

4. Set the table's fill to No Fill if it is not already transparent.

5. Resize the table and the picture as needed so they are both the same size. You might need to crop the picture to keep the right aspect ratio. Figure 9.20 shows a table overlaid over a photo in this way.

Figure 9.20: A picture placed behind a transparent table appears to fill its background.

Applying a Shadow to a Table

New in PowerPoint 2007, you can apply a shadow effect to a table. You can make it any color you like, and adjust a variety of settings for it.

Note 

If the cells have no fill, the shadow will apply to the gridlines, not to the table as a whole object.

To apply a shadow to a table, follow these steps:

1. Select the table's outer frame, and then right-click the frame and choose Format Shape.

2. Click Shadow, and then choose a preset and a color. See Figure 9.21.

3. (Optional) If desired, drag any of the sliders to fine-tune the shadow. These are covered in greater detail in Chapter 10.

4. Click Close to close the Format Shape dialog box when you are finished.

Figure 9.21: Apply a shadow to a table.

Applying a 3-D Effect to a Table

PowerPoint does not enable you to apply 3-D effects to tables, so you have to fudge that by creating the 3-D effect with rectangles and then overlaying a transparent table on top of the shapes. As you can see in Figure 9.22, it's a pretty convincing facsimile.

Figure 9.22: This 3-D table is actually a plain table with a 3-D rectangle behind it.

You might need to read Chapter 10 first to do some of these steps, but here's the basic procedure:

1. Create a rectangle from the Shapes group on the Insert tab, and apply a 3-D effect to it. Use any effect you like. To create the traditional "box" appearance as in Figure 9.22, apply the second Oblique preset and then in the 3-D Format options, increase the Depth setting to about 100 points.

2. Size the rectangle so that its face is the same size as the table.

3. On the Format tab, click Send to Back to send the rectangle behind the table.

4. Set the table's fill to No Fill if it is not already transparent.

5. (Optional) Set the table's outer frame border to None to make its edges appear to blend with the edges of the rectangle. To do that, open the Borders button's menu and select Outside Border to toggle that off.

Changing Text Alignment

If you followed the preceding steps to create the effect shown in Figure 9.22, you probably ran into a problem: Your text probably didn't center itself in the cells. That's because by default each cell's vertical alignment is set to Top, and horizontal alignment is set to Left.

Although the vertical and horizontal alignments are both controlled from the Alignment group on the Layout tab, they actually have two different scopes. Vertical alignment applies to the entire cell as a whole, whereas horizontal alignment can apply differently to individual paragraphs within the cell. To set vertical alignment for a cell, follow these steps:

1. Select one or more cells to affect. To affect only one cell, you do not have to select it; just click inside it.

2. On the Layout tab, in the Alignment group, click one of the vertical alignment buttons: Align Top, Center Vertically, or Align Bottom. See Figure 9.23.

   
   Figure 9.23: Set the vertical and horizontal alignment of text from the Alignment group.

To set the horizontal alignment for a paragraph, follow these steps:

1. Select one or more paragraphs to affect. If you select multiple cells, all paragraphs within those cells are affected. If you click in a cell without selecting anything, the change only affects the paragraph in which you clicked.

2. On the Layout tab, in the Alignment group, click one of the horizontal alignment buttons: Align Left, Center, or Align Right. See Figure 9.23. You can also use the paragraph alignment buttons on the Home tab for horizontal alignment, or the buttons on the mini toolbar.

EXPERT TIP 

The horizontal alignments all have keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+L for left, Ctrl+E for center, and Ctrl+R for right.

Changing Text Direction

The default text direction for table cells is Horizontal, which reads from left to right (at least in countries where that's how text is read). Figure 9.24 shows the alternatives.

Figure 9.24: You can set types of text direction.

To change the text direction for a cell, follow these steps:

1. Select the cell(s) to affect. To affect only a single cell, move the insertion point into it.

2. On the Layout tab, click Text Direction.

3. Select a text direction from the menu that appears.

Note 

You cannot set text direction for individual paragraphs; the setting applies to the entire cell.