Creating, modifying, and deleting tables

Table of Contents:

• Inserting a table (YouTube tutorial here [0:56] )
• Resizing columns or rows (YouTube tutorial here [1:21] )
• Changing border and cell color (YouTube tutorial here [4:38] )
• Changing cell alignment (YouTube tutorial here [1:12] )

Inserting a Table

Inserting a table into a Google Doc YouTube tutorial (0:56 long)

To insert a table into a document, go to “Insert” → “Table”, or click on the “Table” menu:

By mousing over the various boxes, you can create a table with the desired number of rows and columns. If you want to add or remove columns or row later, select the row or column you want to insert next to or delete and right-click:

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Resizing columns or rows

Resizing columns or rows YouTube tutorial (1:21 long)

To resize a row or column, hold your cursor over the lines separating rows or columns, and it will change to a double-line with arrows. This will allow you to drag the columns or rows to whatever size you want:

You can also merge cells together by selecting multiple cells and right-clicking:

This results in this table:

You can also unmerge a cell by right-clicking while in the cell and hitting “Unmerge cells”

If you have changed the width/height of any of the columns/rows, you can also “re-distribute” the remaining columns/rows to have equal sizes. Highlight the rows/columns that you want to equalize, right-click, and select “Distribute rows” or “Distribute columns”

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Changing border and cell color

Changing border and cell color YouTube tutorial (4:38 long)

One way to change the color of a cell and its border are to select the cells you want, then hit the options that pop up at the top of the page. If those options are not available, you may need to click on the “More” button on the right side of your screen (when the screen is smaller, options are ‘hidden’ in the More menu):

Another way change the cell background color, highlight the cells you want and right-click and select “Table properties...”

From here a wide variety of options pop up, as labeled below

If you want to change just the border color/size for an individual cell(s), select the cell(s), and click on the mini drop-down arrow that appears in the upper-right corner

Selected borders will now appear highlighted. You can also select or deselect additional borders by holding down either Shift or Ctrl while you place your cursor over different borders and click. 

The formatting options at the top of the page will drastically be reduced to 3 options which affect the color, width, and dash on the border:

This will allow you to create a table with completely or partially “hidden” borders that are only colored to match the background:

You can also add images to a table and hide the borders to make the information seemingly “float” on the page:

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Changing cell alignment

Changing cell alignment YouTube tutorial (1:21 long)

To change the alignment of text within a cell left/right/center/justified, select the cells and go to the align buttons at the top of the screen

You may notice that the cells  have a great deal of whitespace underneath each piece of text and the words are smashed toward the top of each cell. This is because the text is Top aligned. To either Middle or Bottom align it, select the cells you want, and right-click and hit “Table properties...”

Now you can see a better alignment in each cell:

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Example Tables