Working with a table

Copying the practice document

If you are beginning this course at this point, you will need to copy the practice document to your Google Drive.

NOTE: If you have been working through the course, your file should be up to date and you will not need to copy the practice document. You may continue at Inserting a table.

To begin copying the practice document in a new browser window,

Right-click Copy practice document, Click Open link in new window

The file begins to open in a new window of the web browser. Before the document will open and can be edited, we need to make a copy of it.

Move to the new browser window.
To copy the document file, in the browser window,

Click

A copy of the file is now open and, by default, is saved in your Google Drive. The filename now has the words "Copy of" at the beginning.

Inserting a table

When working in Google Docs, simple tables can be used to organize and align information.

While tables can be help make your document look nice when printed, tables are not always accessible to readers who utilize a screen reader. It is important to keep your table simple and to include descriptive headers and a description of the table.

Let's insert a table showing the 5 largest LEGO sets. This table will include a header row and a row for each LEGO set. The table will have two columns - one for the name of the set and one for the number of pieces. We'll put this table at the end of the document text between the Ten Product Characteristics list and the Sources.

To move the cursor,
Click before the word Sources
To insert a new line, on the keyboard, press:
Enter key
To move the cursor up to the blank line, on the keyboard, press:
Up arrow key

To add a section heading, type:
Largest LEGO Sets
To format the text as a heading, on the toolbar, if necessary,
Click , Click Heading 1

To see the table options, on the menu bar,
Click Insert, Point Table
To insert a 2x6 table, in the Table menu,
Press & drag two squares across and six squares down:

Adding content to the table

A blank 2x6 table is inserted into the document. By default the table cells have borders and the columns are the same width. This formatting can be modified. Before adjusting these details, let's add content to the table. We will begin with the header row.

To place the cursor in the first cell of the table,
Click in the first cell
To add the first header, type:
LEGO Set
To move to the next cell, on the keyboard, press:
Tab key

To add the second header, type:
Number of pieces
To move to the next cell, on the keyboard, press:
Tab key

The cursor should be in the first cell of the second row. Let's add the names of the LEGO sets and the number of pieces to the table now.

To add text to the first cell in the second row of the table, type:
LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon (2017) Tab key
To add text to the second cell in the second row of the table, type:
7541
To move to the third row of the table, on the keyboard, press:
Tab key

To add the text to the third row, type:
LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle Tab key 6020 Tab key
To add the text to the fourth row, type:
LEGO The Taj Mahal Tab key 5922 Tab key
To add the text to the fifth row, type:
LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon Tab key 5197 Tab key
To add the text to the sixth row, type:
LEGO Ninjago City Tab key 4867

Formatting a table

Now that the content has been correctly entered into the table, let's take some time to format the table. We will adjust the first row to be a bit more obviously a header. We will also change the widths of the columns to better fit the text. Finally we will center the text in the second column.

To select the table text,
Press & drag from LEGO Set to 4867
To change the font, on the toolbar,
Click the current font, Click Verdana
To change the font size, on the toolbar,
Click the current font size, Click 12

To select the text in the header row,
Press & drag from "LEGO set" to "pieces"
To make the text bold, on the toolbar,
Click
To make the text larger, on the toolbar,
Click Click 14

To correctly place the cursor, in the table,
Point to the right border of the first column

The cursor looks like this:

Image of the cursor on the right border of the column. The cursor has both a left and a right arrow.

To move the right border of the column,
Press & drag the border to the right until the most of the text of the first column fits in the cells

To select the text in the second column,
Press & drag down from "Number of pieces" to "4867"
To center the text, on the toolbar,
Click

To open the Table properties dialog box,
Right-click the table, Click Table properties
To remove the border lines, in the Table border area,
Click , Click 0 pt

The table should look similar to this:

the table with the last row on the next page

Your table is probably displaying on multiple pages. We will fix this in the next section.

Working with a table

Copying the practice document

Step 1. Copy the practice document.

Inserting a table

Step 1. Insert a new line between the list of product characteristics and the sources.

Step 2. Add a section heading.

Step 3. Add a 2x6 table.

Adding content to the table

Step 1. Add the text "LEGO Set" to the first cell.

Step 2. Add the text "Number of pieces" to the second cell in the header row.

Step 3. Add the text to the second row of table.

Step 4. Add the remaining text to the table.

Formatting a table

Step 1. Format the table text to be Verdana 12 pt font.

Step 2. Format the header row to be bold and 14 pt font.

Step 3. Adjust the column widths to better fit the text.

Step 4. Center the text in the second column.

Step 5. Remove the border lines.