| Microsoft Word is a very versatile word
processing tool. There are many features in the program of which many
folks are not aware. With just a few clicks and some specially formatted
text, items like tables of contents, indexes and bibliographies can be
created and updated automatically. This is very useful, especially if you
are writing long documents.
Another feature, which is very useful, is the conversion of text to
tables and tables to text. If you are like me, it is sometimes hard to
get everything to line up correctly using tab stops. There is a very easy
shortcut to doing just that. Let's take a look at turning text into a
table. |
CONVERTING TEXT INTO A TABLE
Using a table can be a very effective way to display information,
especially related data items. For an example, let us take a look at some
fictional high school football statistics. There will be several
categories of information, which will make up the headings for our table
of statistics. We will want to show the name of the teams, their win
records, their loss records, and their tied game records.
If you would like to try this out as you read along, start by opening
up Word to a new document. Now, copy and paste
the following into the new document: Team Name, Wins, Losses, Ties,
Bulldogs, 10, 1, 0, Indians, 5, 5, 2, Tigers, 6,, 4, Cowboys, 3,7,1,
Mustangs, 4, 4, 2
Notice a few things here. A comma separates each data
item. This will be used in formatting the table. Another thing to
note (which you might have thought was an error) is the double comma
after the 6 following the team name "Tigers".
This is not an error, it is a place holder. If you don't have a
value for a data item, place the comma there anyway, it will hold the
place for that item. |
| Now the fun begins. After you have pasted the
line above into a new Word document, highlight all the text. Then select
"Table" from the menu bar, scroll down to "convert
text to table" and click it. A dialog box will pop up, asking for
some formatting information. It will also have some default values shown.
The first box will ask you for the number of columns you want. It will
default to the number of entries in the list, in this case 24. Change text
box value to 4, as this is the number of headings we want (Team Name,
Wins, Losses, and Ties). |
