Centering Information in Table Cells

Tables are a power formatting tool used in many Word documents. Often it is necessary to center information within the cells of a table. There are two ways to center information: horizontally and vertically.

Horizontal centering is quite simple. All you need to do is position the insertion point somewhere within the text, and then click on the Center button on the Formatting toolbar. Centering text vertically is almost as easy:

1. Right-click on the cell containing the information you want to vertically center. This displays a Context menu for the cell.
2. Choose the Alignment (Word 97) or Cell Alignment (Word 2000 or later) option from the Context menu. This displays a submenu.
3. Choose the Center Vertically option.

You should note that vertical centering will not give the desired results if you have the paragraph formatting for the text set to anything except single spacing, with no space before or after the paragraph. This extra spacing before or after affects the centering in the same way that paragraph indents affect horizontal spacing. Also, if you like to use toolbars instead of Context menus, you can access the same centering feature by turning on the Tables and Borders toolbar.