I was helping a paralegal yesterday who had heard a rumor that tables could be pretty useful in Word. I was happy to confirm such a rumor and went on to help her with her first project - a simple pleading index which she would normally do with tabs (what a nightmare). We started by inserting a table (Insert > Table, Select initial number of rows and columns) and named the header columns. Then, she started to manually type in the "Tab Number" number. I had to grab the back of her chair for support to keep from falling over in horror. omg. Imagine all that manual labor! What if she had hundreds of rows and had to insert one in the middle - or worse - at the top?! Holy moly waste of time and money! I composed myself before she noticed and gently told her that there is a better way:
- Hover your mouse over the column that you want to number, you'll notice it change to a downward-pointing arrow.
- When it does, Click. That selects an entire column at a time. You'll see that the column has been highlighted.
- While it's highlighted, find and click the Numbering button in Word's Formatting Toolbar.
- Wah-la! Now as you delete and insert rows, your numbers will automatically adjust.
- To remove a number from an unwanted cell (like the first/heading cell). Click in that cell alone and then click the Numbering button once to toggle it off in that cell.
- If you want to use letters or romans or some other character in there, you can select the column again and go to Format > Bullets and Numbering and change to another list type.
(The video was made it Word 2007, but it's the same steps in 2003)
