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Formatting Table Cells

Now that you have the correct quantity of cells in the table, and in the correct arrangement, let's take a look at the ways you can format them.

Changing Row Height and Column Width

You might want a row to be a different height or a column a different width than the others in the table. To resize a row or column, follow these steps:

Position the mouse pointer on the border below the row or to the right of the column that you want to resize. The mouse pointer turns into a line with arrows on each side of it.

Holding down the mouse button, drag the row or column to a new height or width. A dotted line appears, as shown in Figure 6-11, showing where it will go.

Release the mouse button.

Figure 6-11: Resize the rows or columns of your table as needed to eliminate wasted space or to make room for longer text strings.

The Distribute Rows Evenly and Distribute Columns Evenly buttons on the Tables and Borders toolbar adjust each row or column in the selected range so that the available space is occupied evenly among them. This is handy especiallyif you have drawn the table yourself rather than allowed PowerPoint to create it initially. (If PowerPoint creates the table, the rows and columns are already of equal height and width by default.)

Table Margins and Alignment

Remember, PowerPoint does not have any margins per se on a slide; everything is in a frame. An individual frame does have internal margins, however.

You can specify the internal margins for cells from the Format Table dialog box as follows:

Select the cells to which the setting should apply. To apply to the entire table, select the entire table.

Choose Format⇨Table. The Format Table dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 6-12.

Click the Text Box tab.

Enter Left, Right, Top, and Bottom margins.

From the Text Alignment box, choose a default alignment for the cells of the table (Top, Middle, Bottom, Top Centered, Middle Centered, or Bottom Centered). You can override this setting for individual cells as needed, as you would any text box (see Chapter 5).

Click OK.

Figure 6-12: Use the Format Table dialog box to set table margins and default alignment.

Applying Borders

The border lines around each cell are very important because they separate the data in each cell. By default, there's a 1-point (that's 1/72 of an inch) border around each side of each cell, but you can make some or all borders fatter, a different line style (dashed, for example), a different color, or remove them altogether to create your own effects. Here are some examples:

To make a list of names appear to be floating in multiple columns on the slide (that is, to make it look as if they are not really in a table at all but just lined up extremely well), remove all table borders. In Figure 6-13, for example, the borders on the top row (Q1, Q2, Q3) have been removed, and the column headings appear to be floating above the grid.

To create a header row at the top, make the border beneath the first row of cells darker or thicker than the others. In Figure 6-13, the line between the column headings and the first row of months has been assigned a 6-point line.

To make it look as if certain items have been crossed off a list, format those cells with diagonal borders. This creates the effect of an X running through each cell. (These diagonal lines are not really borders in the sense that they don't go around the edge of the cell, but they're treated as borders in PowerPoint.) In Figure 6-13, January and February both have diagonal borders applied.

Figure 6-13: Here are some things you can do with border formatting.

When you apply a top, bottom, left, or right border, those positions refer to the entire selected block of cells if you have more than one cell selected. For example, suppose you select two adjacent cells in a row and apply a left border. The border applies only to the leftmost of the two cells. If you want the same border applied to the line between the cells too, you must apply an Inside Vertical border.

TOOLBAR METHOD

The Tables and Borders toolbar has several buttons for applying table borders, as you saw in Table 6-2. Follow these steps:

Select the cell(s) that you want to format.

Select a border style from the Border Style button's list. The default is solid, but you can choose a variety of dotted or dashed lines.

Select a border thickness from the Border Width drop-down list. The default is 1 point.

Click the Border Color button and choose a different color for the border, if desired. The colors that appear on the palette are the colors from the current color scheme in the presentation. You can also choose More Border Colors.

Click the down arrow next to the Border Sides button to open its drop-down list of borders (see Figure 6-14). Then, click the button for the border positioning you want to apply. For example, to place the border on all sides of all selected cells, click the All Borders button, which is the one that looks like a window pane.

If you need to apply the border to any other sides, repeat step 5. If you need to turn the border off for any side that currently has a border, click the button for that side to toggle it off.

Figure 6-14: Use the controls on the Tables and Borders toolbar to format the border of each cell in the table.

DIALOG BOX METHOD

For more control over the borders, use the Format Table dialog box as follows:

Select the cell(s) to affect.

Choose Format⇨Table. The Format Table dialog box opens.

Click the Borders tab.

Choose a border style, color, and width.

Click the buttons surrounding the sample to turn the border for each side on or off individually. The sample shows the effect (see Figure 6-15).

If you want differently styled borders on some sides, repeat steps 3 through 5.

Click OK to finish.

Figure 6-15: The Format Table dialog box lets you specify formatting for the border on each side of each cell.

Applying Fills

By default, table cells have a transparent background so that the color of the slide beneath shows through. Most of the time, this looks very nice, and you should not need to change it. Sometimes, however, you might want a different color background for some or all of the cells in the table.

To change the color of the cells, follow these steps:

Select the cell(s) to affect, or to apply the same color to all the cells, select the table's outer border.

Click the down arrow next to the Fill Color button on the Tables and Borders toolbar. A palette of colors opens.

Select the color you want. Or to remove the background fill, choose No Fill instead of a color. This is the same color palette as in earlier chapters when you were selecting a fill for text boxes and backgrounds.

You can also use a dialog box method. Choose Format⇨Table, and use the Fill tab of the Format Table dialog box to select a color. The benefit of doing this is that a Semi-transparent checkbox is available there, so you can have a semi-transparent fill (see Figure 6-16).

Figure 6-16: Mark the Semitransparent checkbox, if desired, on the Fill tab of the Format Table dialog box.

As with text boxes and background, you can also choose More Fill Colors to choose a different color, or choose Fill Effects to choose gradients, patterns, or other special effects, just like with text boxes and backgrounds.

When you fill a table with a color, picture, texture, or pattern, each cell gets its own individual fill. That means that, for example, if you fill with a picture of a dog, and the table has nine cells, you'll see nine dogs (see Figure 6-17).

Figure 6-17: When you apply a picture fill to a table in general, each cell gets its own copy of the picture.

If you want a single copy of the picture to fill the entire area behind the table, make the table background transparent (by deselecting the Fill Color checkbox on the Format Table dialog box's Fill tab), and then place the picture as a separate object on the slide, behind the table. Then, use the Draw⇨Order⇨Send to Back command from the Drawing toolbar to move the picture's position in the stack to the back (see Figure 6-18).

Figure 6-18: When you make the table background transparent and then place the picture behind it as a separate object, a single copy of the picture can serve as the background for the entire table.

Special Effects for Borders and Fills

One extra option that appears on the Fill menu for tables (as well as many other objects) is Background. Setting the fill color to Background makes it match the background color or fill for the slide. Isn't this the same thing as transparent? Well, sort of, but not exactly. If you are stacking items in layers on the slides, and the table's background is transparent, it will show whatever is behind it, whether that's the background or some intervening object(s). If you set the fill to Background, the table's background will always match the slide's background, and any intervening objects in the stack will be masked. Figures 6-19 and 6-20 show the difference.

Figure 6-19: When the table's fill is transparent, any objects between the table and the background show through.

Figure 6-20: When the table's fill is set to Background, the table's fill shows exactly what the slide background shows, and any intervening items are masked.

Many times I have wished for the ability to apply a 3-D or shadow effect to a table, but PowerPoint does not allow it. One way I have at least partially gotten around this has been to apply a different thickness of border to two sides of a table's outer frame, giving the illusion of a shadow (if you don't look too closely). For example, in Figure 6-21, the right and bottom border is 6-point gray while the rest of the borders are 1/2-point black. Change the border thickness for each individual cell to simulate a shadow effect for each one. Another method is to apply a fill and then place a shaded AutoShape underneath in the stack.

Figure 6-21: Using a different thickness of border for two sides can simulate a shadow effect.

Here's a sneaky way around the "no shadow" limitation for tables in PowerPoint. PowerPoint does allow you to apply shadows to pictures, right? And also to imported objects from other programs, such as Excel. So here's what you can do:

Type your table in Excel.

Apply the borders around the desired cells in Excel.

Copy the desired range in Excel to the Clipboard.

Start a new Title Only or Title and Text slide in PowerPoint.

Paste the copied Excel cells onto the new slide. Warning: it won't look very pretty at this point.

Click the Paste Options icon near the bottom right corner of the pasted cells, to open its menu, and choose Picture of Table (see Figure 6-22). Now you have a picture of the table.

Drag the selection handles of the pasted table picture to enlarge it as needed. The text will enlarge along with the table itself. (Since it is a graphic, can't control its font directly. If you want to change the font or formatting, go back to Excel, make the changes there, and then recopy the table.)

Click the Shadow button on the Drawing toolbar and apply a shadow. Since the object is transparent, each character of text will appear individually shadowed.

Apply a fill to the object (white, for example). The shadow will move to the outer border of the object. Voila, you've just created a table with a shadow!

Figure 6-22: Change the paste option for the pasted Excel cells to Picture of Table, so PowerPoint will treat the pasted object as a graphic.

If you want a 3-D table, as shown in Chapter 7 first, to learn how to do some of these steps:

Create a rectangle with the drawing tools (see Chapter 7) and apply a 3-D effect to it. Right-click it, choose Add Text, and type some text in it.

Copy it as many times as needed until you have enough copies for every cell in your table.

Arrange the rectangles in a table-like grid. Use the Align and Distribute commands as needed on the Drawing toolbar's Draw menu.

Arrange the stacking order of the rectangles (using the Draw⇨Order menu command) as needed.

Type different text in each rectangle.

Select them all, and group them (using the Draw⇨Group menu command) into a single object.

Figure 6-23: Group 3-D rectangles together and add text to each of them to create the illusion of a 3-D table.