NMSU KnowledgeBase

Prepare the text

Before you convert a list or text to a table, make sure that your data is formatted correctly. Here are a few tips:

• Select Home > Show/Hide to show the tabs and paragraph marks in your document.

  

• Insert separator characters, such as commas or tabs, to show where to divide the text into table columns. If there are commas in your text, use tabs.

• Use paragraph marks to indicate where you want to begin a new table row.

In this example, two tabs are inserted in the text to create a three-column table and one paragraph mark is inserted to create a second row.

Create the table

1. Select the text that you want to convert to a table.

2. Select Insert > Table and then select Convert Text to Table.

   

3. Set the column width:

   • To set a custom width for all columns, select Fixed column width and select a number from the list.

   • To resize the columns to fit the text, select AutoFit to contents.

   • To resize the table to fit the width of the available space, select AutoFit to window.

     

4. For Separate text at, select the separator character that you used in the text.

5. Select OK.

Here’s the example text after it’s been converted to a table.