Microsoft® Office 2010 Bible

Chapter 23. Working with Tables and Charts

IN THIS CHAPTER

Creating a new table

Moving around in a table

Selecting rows, columns, and cells

Editing a table's structure

Applying table Quick Styles

Formatting table cells

Understanding charts

Starting a new chart

Working with chart data

Chart types and chart layout presets

Working with labels

Controlling the axes

Formatting a chart

You can type tabular data—in other words, data in a grid of rows and columns—directly into a table, or import it from other applications. You can also apply formatting that makes tabular data easier to read and more attractive. When you need to create a quick chart that has no external source, PowerPoint's charting tool works perfectly. The PowerPoint 2010 charting interface is based on the one in Excel, so you don't have to leave PowerPoint to create, modify, and format professional-looking charts.

In this chapter, you'll learn how to create and manage PowerPoint tables and how to create charts that present numeric data in a visual format.

Creating a New Table

A table is a great way to organize little bits of data into a meaningful picture. For example, you might use a table to show sales results for several salespeople or to contain a multicolumn list of team member names.

Note

Text from a table does not appear in the presentation's outline.

There are several ways to insert a table, and each method has its purpose. The following sections explain each of the table creation methods.

A table can be part of a content placeholder ...