Google Docs Tutorial - Part 11 - Inserting Tables
Learn how to insert tables into a Google Document during this tutorial on Google Docs table.
Sometimes you will need to display data inside of your document, and this can be accomplished by using tables. Hopefully in reading through this manual, you have been following along in Google Docs.
If you have the Banana Tree document used throughout this chapter, make sure it is open. If you have not been following along by creating the Banana Tree document, you should create a new document or open one of your existing documents as you have previously learned.
To begin with, you should create an open space in your document where you can insert a table. In the Banana Tree document, you should place the cursor at the end of the document and type the table heading “Favorite Banana Recipes”. Then position the cursor below the heading, as seen below.
Tables can be inserted a couple of different ways. In previous chapters, you have been using the Insert menu to insert different objects into your document. A table is another object that can be inserted from the Insert menu as you can see pictured to the right. However, you may have noticed that there is also a Table menu located on the toolbar. It is also possible to insert a table using this menu, as demonstrated below. For now, try clicking on the Table menu and selecting the first option of Insert table…
Regardless of whether you chose to insert your table from the Insert menu or the Table menu, the Insert Table window appears (as shown to the right).
This window will present you with several different options to set up your basic table framework. In the first section, you can change the Size of your table. You first need to determine how many rows and how many columns you want your table to have. In this exercise, set your table to include two rows and three columns. Next you can determine the width of the table with several different options. The default setting is to have your table span the Full width of the page with your current margins. If you click the drop-down menu, you see that you have the option to have your table Sized to content, measured in Pixels:, or measured by Percent:. When your table is Sized to content, the width of the table will shrink/expand to fit around what you have typed into the table cells. For the Pixels: option, you must enter a certain number of pixels for your table to span, and for the Percent: option, you must enter a percentage of the page that you want the table to span across. For this example, keep the table width at Full Width.
Next, you have a check box option that, when checked, will keep all of the columns in the table at equal width; the width of your table will be evenly spread out across all of the columns. You can always change this, or any other options in this box, later.
You can also set the height of the table using options that are similar to those available for the width. You can choose Full height, which means that the table will take up the full height of your page, or Size to content which means that the height of the table will vary depending on the cell contents. There are also the Pixels: option and the Percent: option for height. For this exercise, set the height as Size to content.
The next section allows you to define the Layout of the table. You can change the padding and spacing in this section. Padding refers to the space between your cell content, the text that you have typed in the cell, and the cell (or table) border itself. You probably do not want your content touching the edge of your table or cell because it will look cramped, so you may want to keep your Padding at three for now. If you want to have more space between your content and the border around it then you can increase the number from three to something higher. You can also set the content alignment here by choosing Left, Center, or Right but for now, keep it as None.
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You can also change the Spacing, which refers to the space between your cells. The higher the number, the more space will be used to separate the actual cells. Leave this as zero because you do not need space between the cells in this exercise. There is also an option to Float your table – it can either be floated on the left or the right side of the page – however, when your table is set to Full Width, like the one you are creating, the Float option becomes null as the table already spans the entire width of the page.
In the Border section, you can set the size and color of your table border. Currently, the border is set at zero, which means that there is no border (or an invisible border) around the table or around the cells. If you were to print your document with a border size of zero, there would be no lines around the table or the table content. However, while you are working on the document, if the border is set at zero you will see a dotted line around the table outlining the table and the cells so that you can see where the table is and where to work within it. In this exercise, you want a border around the table and data, so you should add a thin Border Size of two (see picture above). The higher the number you put for size, the thicker your border will be. You are also going to change the color of the border by clicking on the Color: box. A color palette will display all of the available colors, and you can select any one of these colors for the table border. For this exercise, click on the brown as indicated on the previous page. Lastly, you can change the Background color of the table by clicking the white box and choosing a color from the palette that pops up again. For now, let’s leave this white.
Now that you have established some settings for the table (as shown to the right), you will click the Insert button and see a table that looks just like the one shown below. You can see that the table width spans the entire page, like you selected, but the height is relatively small. This is mainly due to the lack of any content typed into the table. The next logical step will therefore be to start entering some table content.
Place your cursor in the table cell where you want to enter some data, and type the word “Rank.” Take note that as you type, the height of this cell and the entire row has changed to fit around your cell content (see below). Since this is going to be a header row, you are going to make this text larger. Select the text by clicking and dragging the mouse over it, and then use the font size drop-down menu on the toolbar to change the size of the text to 18pt (see below). Now you can see that the cell and row have expanded again to match the increased size of the text. This is a result of the Size to content setting used for the height in your table.
To move your cursor to the next cell, you can either click in it, press the keyboard [Tab] key, or use your arrow keys to navigate around the table. You should now enter some table content so that you have some data to work with. Try to fill in your table to match the example below.
As you compile data in your table, you are going to need to insert more rows. To add more rows, place your cursor in a row either above or below the table area where you want the row inserted (when adding rows to the end of a table, make sure your cursor is placed in the bottom row), and then open the Table menu (pictured on the following page). If you scroll down the menu, you will find the options to Insert row above or Insert row below. When adding rows to the end of a table, you will logically choose to Insert row below, and you should see it appear below the current row. In this exercise, you will actually need a few more rows, so keep selecting Table menu and choosing Insert row below until you have four (4) blank rows at the bottom of the table. Now you can continue to fill in your table data, mirroring the table below.
If you look closely at the table, you’ll notice that although the recipe items are ranked, they have not been placed in order; there is rank 5 where 4 should really be and rank 4 is where 5 should be. Thankfully this is an easy fix.
Click on either one of the rows that you want to move (for this example, click on the bottom row), and then click on the Table menu. In the menu, you can see the options to Move row up or Move row down (see below). Since you placed your cursor in the bottom row, you will want to move that row up, so select Move row up. You should now see that your table data is listed in the correct ranking order, with the number 4 showing where it should be and number 5 is where it should be as well.
Now that you are working with your table, you may decide to change some of the general settings. Open the Table menu and click on Modify table properties… (as pictured to the right). You will now see the Change Table dialog box, which looks very similar to the previously discussed Insert Table dialog box used when you first created the table. Even after creating a table, Google Docs will allow you to change the size, the layout, the border, and the background of the table, so you are never “stuck” with your original table options. For now, let’s change the width of the table, since it does not really need to span across the entire page. Instead, use the Percent: Width option, and set the width to span 50 percent of the page (see below). Click the Change button and notice how the table changes; it is now spanning across half of the page, which is probably better since you did not have a great deal of data in the table.
For consistency, you also should change each of the header row items to a font size of 18pt. Notice the improved looking table below.
Well done! You have now created a basic table, filled it with data and you have modified the table properties. In the next section, instead of focusing on the table properties as a whole, you are going to take a look at the row, column, and individual cell properties.
