Word offers only a handful of keyboard shortcuts for working with tables, but most of them are well worth knowing.
[Tab]
Press [Tab] to move to the next cell, automatically selecting its contents. (After pressing [Tab] , press to deselect the selection and move the insertion point to the beginning of the cell, or press ’ to deselect the selection and move the insertion point to the end of the cell.)
If the current cell is the last cell in the table, pressing [Tab] adds a new row to the table after the current last row and selects the first cell in the new row.
[Shift] - [Tab]
Press [Shift] - [Tab] to move to the previous cell, automatically selecting its contents. (After pressing [Shift] - [Tab] , press to deselect the selection and move the insertion point to the beginning of the cell, or press ’ to deselect the selection and move the insertion point to the end of the cell.)
[Alt] - [5] on the numeric keypad, with [Num{Lock] off
Use this shortcut when you need to manipulate all of a table. You can also use it when you need to move quickly to the beginning or end of the table: select all the table, and then press to collapse the selection to the beginning of the table or ’ to collapse the selection to the end of the table.
[Ctrl] - [Shift] - [Enter]
Click to place the insertion point at the beginning of the row where you want to split the table, and then press this shortcut. This shortcut is the equivalent of the Table Split Table command.
Tip | Use this shortcut (or the Split Table command) when a document has a table as its first item, and you need to insert paragraphs above the table. |
[Ctrl] - [Alt] - [U]
You may need to update the autoformatting on a table after you add or delete rows, columns , or cells .