This article provides an extensive guide on how to format and stylize a table within a document. The process involves adding additional rows, editing text within the table structure, and adjusting the size and color of cells for improved readability and aesthetics.
Key Insights
- The article shows how to add additional rows to a table in order to create more space and ensure that the content is not too tightly packed together.
- Through using a combination of keyboard shortcuts and menu selections, the guide explains how to center text, indent cells, and adjust text size for better readability within the table structure.
- The final part of the article covers how to stylize the table, including changing the cell color and removing unnecessary lines between rows to visually separate different sections of the table.
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We've now completed all of the information within our table. However, we want to space this out a bit more.
So right after this top section of Investigations, let's add another row by right-clicking and selecting Insert, and we're going to add a row. We'll select "Below" and hit OK. Here we now have one additional row to give us a little more space.
We'll do the same thing right after Design, right-clicking and selecting Insert > Row. In this case, we're going to insert one row above and hit OK. Next, let's utilize our Selection tool and hit W on the keyboard to see our work.
We'll select our table. As we can see here, our table is actually built on two parts. First, it's built on our text frame.
Second, it's built on our table structure. So it has both a text frame as well as a table structure. Next, we want to actually edit the text within the table structure.
To do this, let's click inside, and let's hit CTRL+A to select all of the text and all of the cells. From here, we'll go to Align Center.
Nothing has moved, and this is probably because the baseline grid is turned on. We'll turn that off.
We'll see that all of our text is now centered correctly. Additionally, we want to move it slightly from the edge. To do that, we can go to our top options.
On the right side here, we're going to add a Left Cell Inset. This is just so it's not right against the edge of the cell. Next, let's change the styling.
We currently have it set to Chivo, but let's bump it up to 16 points and hit ENTER. Now it seems we've lost some of our table.
So let's utilize our Selection tool and simply drag down on the text frame. We've now fit it all. However, it's really tight within this page.
Let's reduce the size. To do this with our Selection tool, we'll hold CTRL+Shift and click inside. Also hold ALT so that we drag from the center and reduce it to whatever size you feel is best.
Click outside. We'll see that we've now resized the entire thing. Remember to hold CTRL+Shift as you resize.
From here, let's do a bit more styling. We're going to select our first cell here. Sometimes the cell can be a little bit difficult to grab.
In this case, we'll simply click inside. We'll go to Table > Select > Cell. From here, we're going to change this from Regular to Bold.
Let's also change the color of the cell. Rather than having it set to No Fill, we're going to scroll down and feel free to choose whatever color you'd prefer. I'm going to use Color 1. I'm also going to center this text.
We'll center the text, and let's also format the text. We'll make it white.
We'll select Paper. If we click outside, we'll see what this looks like. We'll do the same thing with the text below.
Using the Eyedropper tool, we'll select the text and highlight the text. We'll do the same thing with Design. From here, we can use our Selection tool.
Let's simply click this cell here. We'll change the fill color to Color 1. We'll do the same thing down below, changing the fill color to PD Color 1. While those have been styled, the last thing we need to do here is remove the lines on these extra rows. To do this, we can select the row.
With the row selected, all we want to do is remove the stroke of the row. On the right, we can select what lines we want to remove the stroke from. Since we don't want to remove it from the top or bottom—because those are also part of the rows above and below—we simply want to highlight the up and down lines rather than those on top and bottom.
We'll have three blue lines going up and down. With those selected, we can now edit them. We'll set the stroke weight to 0 points.
Let's select this row down here. Again, we're going to deselect the lines on top and click down so it has no stroke. From here, we've effectively kept it all as one table, but it now looks like three separate tables.
As a final step, let's move this over. We'll hit W on the keyboard. Let's simply move this to the right-hand side so that we have the numbers on the right.
Then we'll drag our right side back to the edge of the text frame. We'll hit W and see our work. Well done.
Let's hit CTRL+S on the keyboard to save our work. In the next video, we'll work on our next page. See you there.