Tips & Tricks-July 2003

Did you know that.? That phrase is a good start for a lot of ways that you can make extra use of the some of the applications on your computer.

Microsoft Word is not just a word processor. It can do spreadsheets too. Microsoft Word allows you to put tables in your documents. If you're like most of us, you might use it to set up a chart of text, but did you know that you can also use tables as a simple spreadsheet.

You can create a table by selecting "Table" from the top menu. You can either "Draw" the table or "Insert" it, setting the number of columns and rows that you need. Usually the table will look something like this:

You can then fill in the cells and format the text in the table as you want, including the typeface used, the alignment and a number of other characteristics. You can size the width and height of the columns as you wish.

Then you could enter numbers in the rows and columns and copy the totals or calculate them outside of Word and fill them in.

Or you can create formulas in the table to do the calculations for you and format the results. Place the cursor in the cell for the formula, then click on Table, Formula and a small dialog box pops up.

Word tries to anticipate what the formula will be based on the location of the cell that you have selected. When I selected the cell under "1st Quarter", Word automatically provided the formula, {=SUM(ABOVE)}. Pretty simple-sum all the numbers in the column above the cell I selected. If you wanted to specify which rows to include, you can do so in the same way you designate ranges in a spreadsheet.

The cells are labeled (even though you can't see it) with the columns starting with "A," and the rows with "1", like most spreadsheets. So if I wanted to be specific the formula would be {=SUM(A2:A3)} to get the same result as the formula shown in the box. Notice also that you can give the numbers a format. I chose currency with two decimal places for the table above, but you have several alternatives, including percentages. I couldn't find a way to format the numbers that were not part of the formula, however, so had to manually format them.

In the final cell, I calculated the average using a function supplied in the dialog box. It certainly helps to know that you use a colon between the two cells to show a range and that you can also use arithmetical operators to create totals. It isn't obvious when you select the function, that you have to fill in the range between the parentheses. Below is what the table looks in Word as I created. I added the fancier border.

When printed the table looks like this.

You can apply different borders, format the text, show gridlines or not. Using borders cell by cell, you can create gridlines for parts of the table.

This type of table is useful for simple calculations. If you want to include a spreadsheet in your document or presentation, you can also link to or embed an Excel spreadsheet, but that's the topic of different article.