Creating Your Own Table Styles
Applies to: Office 2007
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If you find that you create tables with common attributes and properties, consider creating a Table Style. In Word 2007, Table Styles can be added to the Table Styles Gallery in the Ribbon, allowing users to preview the look and feel before applying it.
To create a new Table Style, follow these steps:
- Insert a table with at least 3 columns and 5 rows, and with your cursor in any cell, go to the Table Tools Design tab.
- Then choose the More button (in the lower right corner of the Table Styles gallery). At the bottom of the gallery, choose New Table Style.
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The Create New Style from Formatting dialog box appears. - Enter the name of your new style, Default Table Style, for example. Then using the Apply formatting to drop-down, identify the discrete section of the table where formatting changes will apply.
For example, choose borders specifically for the Header Row, or shading and Font to be used in Even Banded Rows. Make all modification as desired. - Select whether you want the table style to be available only to this document, or choose to save it in the template attached to this document.
- Select OK to save the new table style.
With your cursor in a table, your new table style will appear under the Custom section of the Tables Style Gallery on the Design tab.
Right-click on your new style if you wish to Modify it further, or if you wish to delete it.
More about: When a Table Style is applied, Word uses a specific "order of operations" by which directly applied formatting will – or won't – take precedent. For example, if your Table Style is defined so that the Header Row uses Blue Shading, but the user applies Red shading by selecting the Row, this attribute takes precedence. To remove such attributes, and revert to the underlying properties of the Table Style, right-click on the applied Table Style in the Table Styles Gallery, and choose the Apply (and Clear Formatting) option. On characters and/or on text, you may also need to use Ctrl-Spacebar or Ctrl-Q to clear Font or directly-applied paragraph formatting as well.
