Welcome to the spoken tutorial on Table and table properties.
In this tutorial we will learn how to:
Insert a table in a Writer document
Add and modify rows and columns
And adjust the table properties as per our preference.
This tutorial is recorded using Ubuntu Linux OS 18.04 and LibreOffice Suite version 6.3.5
Two files have been provided to you in the Code files link on this tutorial page. Please download and extract the files.
Make a copy and then use them for practising.
Open the Resume.odt file which we have created earlier.
Now let’s learn how to insert Tables in a Writer document.
Place the cursor at the end of EDUCATION DETAILS and press Enter.
To insert a table into a document, click on the Insert table icon in the Standard toolbar.
Now, select the size of the table, that is the rows and columns you require.
I will select the 2X4 (2 by 4) option which will give me 4 rows and 2 columns.
Let me show you another way to insert a table into a Writer document.
Before that we will press the Ctrl + Z keys to undo the changes.
Now, click on the Table menu in the menu bar and then click on Insert table option.
Insert Table dialog-box opens with several fields.
In the Name field, let us name the table as Resumetable.
We will keep the number of Columns as 2.
In the Rows field, click on the Plus button and increase the number of rows.
Click the Minus button to decrease the number. Let’s bring the number back to 3
Below we see a list of Styles.
We can use this list to select a style for the table, if we want to.
We’ll click on the Default Style option for now.
Then click on the Insert button at the bottom right.
A table with two columns and two three rows get inserted below EDUCATION DETAILS.
Now we can type any information in tabular form inside the table.
Notice a new toolbar at the bottom.
Here are shortcuts to the most common table features.
Let’s click inside the cell in column 1 and row 1 of the table.
Here we’ll type Secondary School Examination.
Now, click on the adjacent cell and type 93 %.
Likewise, we will type other educational details in the table, as shown.
To add a new row, use the Rows below icon in the table toolbar at the bottom.
When we are in the last row of a table, press the Tab key on the keyboard. This will add another row to our table.
Click on row 2 column 1.
Pressing the Tab key helps to move forward from cell to cell.
Pressing Shift + Tab keys help to move backward from cell-to-cell.
In the last row, type PhD CSE in column 1 and 2015 in column 2.
Another important feature in tables is resizing rows and columns.
We can adjust the height and width of rows and columns in a table in several ways.
We can increase the column width manually by dragging the border with the cursor. Likewise, we can decrease the width as well.
We can do the same with row height also.
Now place the cursor in column 2 of any row and click.
Then click on the Table menu in the Menu toolbar and on Size option.
Now select Minimize Column Width suboption.
The width of the column adjusts itself automatically.
It matches the width of the content of the cells in the selected column.
Next, let’s learn some cool tricks with tables.
I am going to use the Table-demo.odt file for this part of the demonstration.
Open the file Table-demo.odt which you downloaded earlier, in Writer.
Here I have a table with 2 columns and 5 rows.
To select an entire column, move the cursor to the top of a column of the table.
The cursor changes into a downward arrow.
Now click the left mouse button. The entire column is selected.
Let’s align the text to the centre by clicking on the Centre Align icon.
The entire text in this column gets centre-aligned.
Now click anywhere on the document to deselect.
Next, move the cursor towards the top left corner of the table.
The cursor changes into a downward slanting arrow.
Click the left mouse button. The entire table gets selected.
Now click anywhere on the document to deselect.
Click inside any cell in the table.
This time select the entire table by clicking on the Select Table icon in the toolbar.
Click on the Table menu in the menu bar and select Properties.
Alternatively, click on the Table Properties icon in the table toolbar.
Either ways, the Table Properties dialog box opens. Here we see many tabs and many options.
On the extreme right, notice that the Alignment is set to Automatic.
First, let’s change this to Left.
On doing so, other disabled options in the dialog box get enabled.
Let’s name this table as MyTable1 and change the Width field to 12cm.
Click on the OK button at the bottom of the dialog box.
Observe the change in the size of the columns.
Once again, click inside any cell in the table.
Click on the Table Properties icon in the table toolbar once again.
Click on the Column tab.
Under Column Width section, we can see that only 1 and 2 are enabled. This is because we have only 2 columns in our table.
Here, let’s change the value of column 2 to 10cm
Click on the checkbox for Adjust columns proportionally.
And press the OK button at the bottom right
Observe the change in the size of the column 2.
Click on the Select Table icon in the table toolbar.
Now, click on the Optimize Size icon in the table toolbar.
This is the shortcut icon to adjust width of rows and columns.
Select Distribute Columns Evenly option.
The columns are now of the same width.
We can also increase the column width manually by dragging the border with the cursor. Likewise, we can decrease the width as well.
We can do the same with row height also.
Next, let’s learn how to work with cells in a table.
Click inside the cell in column 2 and row 3.
Now keeping the Shift and Ctrl keys pressed, hold the cursor over the left column border.
Then with the mouse, drag the border to the left, as demonstrated here. The border of that particular cell moves!
Next, we will learn to split and merge cells.
Click inside the cell in column 2 and row 3.
In the table toolbar, click on the Split Cells icon.
A dialog box opens with some options.
In the Split cell into field, we will say 3.
In the Direction field, we’ll choose Vertically and click on the OK button.
The cell is split into 3 equal cells.
Now, let’s select the 3 cells and click on Merge Cells icon in the table toolbar. The 3 cells get merged.
That’s how we split and merge cells in a table in Writer.
Once again, click inside the cell in column 2 and row 3.
We can even split the table into 2 by clicking on the Split Table icon in the table toolbar.
The dialog box that opens, shows some options.
Depending on what we choose, the table will be split accordingly.
First I will choose No heading and click on the OK button.
The table is split into 2 tables. Press Ctrl + Z keys to undo this action.
Once again, click inside the cell in column 2 and row 3.
Click on the Split Table icon in the table toolbar.
I will choose the Copy heading option and click on the OK button.
The table is split into 2 tables with the same column headings.
Let’s learn about some more alignment options.
Before that, drag down the bottom row border of the second table’s heading row.
Select the entire header row as shown here.
Now, look at the alignment options for the cell, in the table toolbar.
Align Top is selected, by default.
Click on Align Bottom and Centre Vertically to see how the text gets aligned within the cell.
To give a background colour to a cell, first click within a cell.
In the table toolbar, click on the Table Cell Background Color icon.
Yellow is the default highlight colour.
To open the full color palette, click on the down-arrow of the icon. Now we can choose other colors from here.
Next to Background Color icon, we see Autoformat Styles icon.
AutoFormat dialog box opens up.
We see varioustyles' here that we can apply to our table, if we want to.
Click on the Cancel button.
In the table toolbar, we see icons for choosing different Borders, Border styles, Border colours.
And there are numerical formats shortcut icons, too, in the table toolbar.
Explore all these options on your own.
Save our file by pressing Ctrl + S keys. And then close it by clicking on the X icon at the top right.
This brings us to the end of this tutorial
In this tutorial, we learnt to Insert a table in a Writer document
Add and modify rows and columns
Adjust the table properties as per our preference
As an assignment Open practice.odt.
Insert a table with 3 rows and 2 columns
Add the headings for the columns as Column One and Column Two
Add some text in all cells of the table Save and close the file
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The script for this tutorial is contributed by Nancy Varkey from IIT Bombay. This is Pratik Kamble from IIT Bombay signing off. Thank you for watching.