2 July 2014

Clearer table formatting than Microsoft auto-format

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Some great tips on table formatting.

Joey Cherdarchuk has a nice posting on a very different table styling to the type that Microsoft prefers.

Under the banner ‘Clear Off the Table’ he suggests getting rid of gridlines and colors to simplify the look of tables. In his example, Joey takes a standard Microsoft auto formatted table like this:

http://img.office-watch.com/ow/Clear%20off%20the%20table%201.png image from Clearer table formatting than Microsoft auto-format at Office-Watch.com

And changes it to this:

http://img.office-watch.com/ow/Clear%20off%20the%20table%202.png image from Clearer table formatting than Microsoft auto-format at Office-Watch.com

There’s a slide deck which goes through the steps:

Remove the colors
Remove gridlines
Remove Fills
Remove the border
Remove bolding
Left Align Text
Right Align Numbers/Dates
Align Titles with Data
Resize columns to data
Put whitespace to work
(put gaps between groups)
Use consistent precision
Round the numbers
Remove Repetition
Please no more Calibri
(he uses another san-serif font – Open Sans since Calibri shows up in tables way too often)
Add back the emphasis

In the blog comments Joey remarks that alternate row colors have a place when the row groups are larger. Certainly alternate coloring makes it easier for the eye to move accurately along a line, but they aren’t always necessary.

Clearer table formatting than Microsoft auto-format

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