It all depends on a single setting in the Borders and Shading dialog box, as described here. Word allows you to quickly add borders to cells in a table, but you may not know that you can also add borders to the text within the cells. In Word, it’s often easier to use a table to lay out text in columns. Reuse Your Tables to Save Microsoft Word, use tables and tabs to arrange textĭon’t use the spacebar in Microsoft Word to position text.
Download this free guide to help you learn how to properly format tables in Word. Smart and subtle improvements are sure to continue with the arrival of Microsoft Office 2016. Microsoft makes it easier to create and format basic tables. Was that text inside tables is not forced to align with text outside the table. Microsoft Word 2013 brought a new layout engine and finer controls for creating those little grids of cells. On Word, tables are not just containers for data – they are essential formatting tools. It’s easy to do using either dialog boxes or toolbars, as described in this 8 Formatting Tips for Perfect Tables in Microsoft Word (2013 2016) When creating a table, you can turn the orientation of the text, within a cell, by ninety degrees in either direction from normal. If you need to center your information, you can do it both horizontally and vertically using the information in this tip. One of the most common ways to format information in a table is to apply some sort of alignment to the contents of table cells. Need to adjust the width of a bunch of table columns according to what is in the columns? Word provides a tool to do this, called AutoFit. Want to change the borders that Word adds to your tables? You have complete control over the way your borders appear, using the tools described in this tip. The Borders control on the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Paragraph group also works on tables. There is a Borders and Shading button on the dialog box. When to use a SmartArt graphic and when to use a chart. Basically, SmartArt graphics are designed for text and charts are designed for numbers. When should I use a SmartArt graphic and when should I use a chart?Ī SmartArt graphic is a visual representation of information and ideas, and a chart is a visual illustration of numeric values or data.
Must first break apart or ungroup your SmartArt graphic. (Currently you can only do this with the entire SmartArt graphic.) Or you may want to reuse a piece of your SmartArt graphic in other ways. You may want to have a single piece or shape of a SmartArt graphic fly in from off a slide. Here’s a high-level explanation of what you can do with SmartArt.Ĭonvert your SmartArt graphic into shapes - Ungroup SmartArt provides a way to add classy presentation graphics to your document. Learn about different types of shapes in PowerPoint 2013. Not only have you got some instant designer quality flow charts, with the new and improved Shapes you can now apply effects like you find in Photoshop.ĮT MR Charting.DOCX Types of (Auto) Shapes in PowerPoint 2013 In Excel 2007 the graphics features are vastly improved. Here’s how to add them to your drawing efforts. If you add shapes to the drawing canvas, you can use connector lines between those shapes.
(2003 Menu version tip, not tested in Ribbon) There are workarounds, however, and they are covered here. The shapes are apparently hard-coded into Excel, andĬannot be modified. If you want to add shapes to the AutoShapes feature, however, you are out of luck. The graphics features of Excel allow you to add a number of predefined AutoShapes to a workbook. WordArt can be used with just about any text you want. Learn how to change the color used for text in WordArt. You begin by picking a WordArt style from the WordArt gallery, launched from the Insert tab, which you can then customize. WordArt is a quick way to make text stand out with special effects. Insert tab > Tables group > Tables Insert WordArt You can also use tables, ie 1 row 1 column to create "text boxes" Insert tab > Illustrations group > Smartart button > pick any of the very many options If you want related / linked text boxes, with fancy formatting options you can use SmartArt Click and drag to create the shape, right click on it, select "insert text". Insert tab > Illustrations group > Shapes button. Insert tab > Text group > Wordart button if you want slightly fancier text effects. Which one you use depends in part on how you want to use this / these "text box(es)" and if you need / want to apply "fancy" formatting to the boxes and / or text itself. Using a Text box is only one of several options.