Section 23. About Writer Tables


23. About Writer Tables

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

5 Edit Text

13 Apply Paragraph Formatting


SEE ALSO

24 Create a Table

25 Format a Table


Writer's table-creation power shines when you see how easily you can compose customized tables of information in Writer documents. Tables might contain numbers , text, even graphics, or combinations of any of these. Each row and column intersection is called a cell . As you begin to use both Writer and Calc (see 40 Create a New Spreadsheet ), you might want to embed part of a Calc spreadsheet into a Writer table. Such embedded spreadsheets enable you, for example, to report financial data from within a Writer report.

KEY TERMS

Tables Collections of information organized in rows and columns .

Cell A row and column intersection in a Writer or Calc table or spreadsheet.


With Writer, you can easily create a new table at any blank point in your document by clicking the Table button on the Standard toolbar or the Insert Table dialog box. For instance, you can request a 12-row, 5-column table, and it will be created at the location of the insertion point. If you create your table using the Insert Table dialog box, you can specify additional options and formatting for your table, such as whether to include a header row or to apply an AutoForma t. Using the Table toolbar button is great for creating a simple table; the Insert Table dialog box is best if you want to take advantage of Writer's automatic formatting capabilities and other powerful table tools.

You can format existing text into a table by selecting it and then using either the Table toolbar button or the Insert Table dialog box. When you format existing text into a table, Writer converts each tab stop to a column divider and each paragraph return to a row divider.

TIP

You can also create a table using your keyboard by typing a series of plus signs and hyphens. If, for example, you type a plus sign (+), followed by 10 hyphens (), followed by another plus sign and 10 hyphens, and then press Enter , Writer converts that text into a 2-column, 1-row table. This is handy if you don't like using a mouse, although it can be more time consuming than using the toolbar or dialog-box method.


This table contains five rows and four columns.

NOTE

The ruler shows special column markers when you select a table. By adjusting the ruler's columns, you can adjust the table's width.


Once you create a table, you then can easily adjust its height and width simply by dragging one of the edges with your mouse. You can add and delete rows and columns, too. In addition, you can apply formatting attributes to your table to add color , highlighting, special fonts, and other format attributes that make a dull table look good.

Writer can generate a sophisticated table with automatic formatting, including column shading and lines.



OpenOffice.org 2, Firefox, and Thunderbird for Windows All in One
Sams Teach Yourself OpenOffice.org 2, Firefox and Thunderbird for Windows All in One
ISBN: 0672328089
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 232
Authors: Greg Perry

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