Office 2007 Bible

Editing a Table’s Structure

Now that you’ve created a table, let’s look at some ways to modify the table’s structure, including resizing the entire table, adding and deleting rows and columns, and merging and splitting cells.

Resizing the overall table

As with any other framed object in PowerPoint, dragging the table’s outer frame resizes it. Position the mouse pointer over one of the selection handles (the dots on the sides and corners) so that the mouse pointer becomes a double-headed arrow, and drag to resize the table. See Figure 23-6.

Figure 23-6. To resize a table, drag a selection handle on its frame.

Note

If you drag when the mouse pointer is over any other part of the frame, so that the mouse pointer becomes a four-headed arrow, you move the table rather than resize it.

To maintain the aspect ratio (height to width ratio) for the table as you resize it, hold down the Shift key as you drag a corner of the frame. If maintaining the aspect ratio is not critical, you can drag either a corner or a side.

All of the rows and columns maintain their spacing proportionally to one another as you resize them. However, when a table contains text that would no longer fit if its row and column were shrunken proportionally with the rest of the table, the row height does not shrink fully; it shrinks as much as it can while still displaying the text. The column width does shrink proportionally, ...