Dec 11, 2015

Here are 3 quick ways to perform actions that can seem quite tricky but can actually be done fairly easily.

1. Make all the columns the same width

Say you make a table and you resize a few of the columns to suit your data, but you want the other columns that are no longer the same size to be exactly the same size.

Here’s an example:

Here’s what to do, select all the columns that you want to be exactly the same size and then click on the Distribute Columns button in the yellow Layout contextual tab.

Now all the selected columns are exactly the same width.

2. Rotate text on an angle

If you want to fit a lot of columns on a single page rotating the headings in the heading row of a Word table may allow you to squeeze things in without having to drop the font size to microscopic.

Simply select the heading row and use the Text Direction Button in the Layout tab and you can have the text pointing up or down. It’s good idea to centre the text horizontally and vertically to make it look nicer.

Done!

3. Getting a table that overflows off the page so that it fits in-between the margins.

When you copy and paste a large block of information from Excel into Word, it is usually converted into a Word table but the problem remains that if the data in Excel is wide enough then the newly created table often flows off the page in Word.

Like so:

Because the columns that are off the page can’t be seen, it can be really hard to resize them.

Here’s an easy way to see them again, go to the View tab and click on Draft view

You will now be able to see the entire table because you aren’t limited to seeing just what will fit on the printed page. Click on Print Layout view to switch back to the regular view we work in most of the time. Note that in Draft view you can’t see graphic objects.

For more information, take a look at New Horizons' Microsoft Word training.