Office 2010: The Missing Manual

Chapter 3. Tables, Graphics, and Charts

Word processing isn’t just about words—and neither is Word 2010. Although text probably accounts for the bulk of your documents, you can liven up the proceedings and make your points more clearly by adding other elements. Tables organize information into rows and columns so that readers can easily navigate large collections of data. Charts take the same kind of information and present it graphically, which is great when you want to make a high-impact presentation of comparisons or trends. Graphics can be any kind of image: family vacation photos, the company logo, whimsical clip art, executive portraits, product photos—if you’ve got a picture on your computer, you can put it in your document.

This chapter shows you how to work with nontext elements in Word: inserting them into a document, resizing them, moving them, and editing them. Your documents will be that much more interesting, and your points will come across that much better.

Creating a Table

For centuries, philosophers have puzzled over the question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” When you’re working with tables in Word, a less mind-bending—and far more practical—question is “Which comes first, a table or its data?” The answer is entirely up to you.

When you create a table in Word, you can start by designing an empty table and adding information to it later, or you can start with the information the table will hold, and then use that to create the table. Whichever way you ...