## Creating tables

Tables provide a convenient way of presenting information in a grid of regular rows and columns. Each cell in a table can contain text, graphics, or a combination of the two.

You can change the width of the rows and columns independently, and control the appearance of the table in a variety of ways including the thickness of the border between cells, and the color of the table or cell backgrounds.

You can choose how information is aligned within each cell, and you can merge two or more adjacent cells to create cells which straddle multiple rows or columns.

### To create a table

Either:

- Click the Table icon in the toolbar:

- Drag to draw a rectangle on the page.

Or:

- Open the Insert menu and choose Table....

In either case the following Insert Table dialog box is displayed to allow you to specify the number of rows and columns:

- Enter the number of rows and columns, and optionally change the Border, Cell spacing, and Cell padding.

These are explained later in the chapter.

- Click the OK button to create the table:

Note that you can add or delete rows or columns at a later date if you need to.

### To type HTML text into a table cell

- Double-click in the table cell with the selection pointer to position the insertion bar in the cell.
- Type the text into the cell just as you would with an HTML item.

### To import text into a table

You can import tab delimited, comma delimited, or space delimited text into a table. The fields will be formatted into successive cells, automatically expanding the size of the table if necessary to accommodate the items.

- Double-click to position the insertion point in the first cell you want to import items into.
- Open the File menu and choose Import Text....
- In the Import dialog box select the delimited text file you want to import into the table, and choose the format from the Import pop-up menu:

If the table is not large enough to accommodate the data the following dialog box will give you the option of expanding it or truncating the data:

- Click the OK button to expand the table, or the Truncate Text button to ignore data outside the current size of the table.

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