Tables

In this video tutorial, we will go over how to use tables in PowerPoint. First, let’s create a table with 5 rows and 5 columns. I will go to the Insert table command in the Insert tab. Then I will float my mouse over the table grid 5 squares to the right, which will represent my columns and 5 squares down, which will represent my rows. Entering Data To enter data into the cells I can use the navigational arrows on my keyboard or use the tab command. Right now I am entering data into a cell and will press down to move to the next cell, then enter more text. Let’s skip forward to the whole table being filled in with my text. Notice that my text is smaller than it was before. If you want to change the text size in a table to fit on the page, you can change the text size just like you would in a content placeholder by selecting your text and changing the size in the home tab, in the font group. Resize Rows, Columns, and Tables To move the table, you can move your mouse to an outside border of the table, wait until the mouse pointer turns into a four-way handle, then click and drag the table where ever you need it to be on the slide. To resize the entire table you can click, hold, and move the corners inward to make the table smaller. You can also choose to resize individual columns and rows. To do this, go to the Format Tables Layout tab, and then in the cell size group, increase the height of the row, from 1” to 2”. If I wanted to make the rows an equal size instead of having only the height of my selected row bigger I could press “distribute rows” to do that. Be careful not to confuse cell size with table size. Let’s make the table bigger as a whole. You would do that in the Table size group. Let’s change the height of the table to 7” and the width to 12”. Add Rows and Columns I have to add a row at the bottom to enter more information. The way to add a row would be to click any cell in the bottom row of the table, then click on the Format Table Layout tab. In the Rows & column group, click insert below. This will insert a row below our insertion point. Delete Rows and Columns You can also delete columns and rows. On second thought, maybe I don’t need that last row and I want to get rid of it. To do this I will highlight the row that I don’t need. Then click on the Format Table Layout tab. In the Rows & column group, click the delete drop arrow and click “delete row”. This will delete the extra row. Merge and Split a Table Now I need to add a title in the first row. To do this I will have to merge the columns to make it one. I can do this by selecting the first row and then click on the Table Tools Layout tab, then click the Merge icon in the merge group. Now my first row has merge the columns and I can enter my title: “Persuasive Essay rubric”. I can also split the cells in the table, which would be the opposite of merging them. Splitting allows you to split cells into more rows or columns. In this example, I want to add a picture depicting the four levels of assessment. I will need to split the first row. To do this, I will need to highlight the row that I want to split first, then I will click the split cells icon in the Format Table Layout tab. I will choose to split the row into 1 column and 2 rows by entering this information in the split cells dialog box. I will repeat these steps again so that I can split the empty row into five columns by choosing the 5 columns and 1 row in the split cells dialog box.