The Word word processor from the Microsoft office suite is a very useful tool full of possibilities. If we know how to use it well, we will be able to increase our productivity dramatically. That is why it is important to know their tricks, like the one we explain in this post: convert text into a table with Word.
Thus we will discover one of the many advantages of use Word efficiently for anyone who works more or less regularly with this program. There are no tricks that are too complicated, the truth is that they are within everyone's reach and can bring us great benefits.
What is?
There are several ways to make tables in Word. Basically, it involves setting up a grid with a series of rows and columns, selecting an appropriate appearance, and finally entering the data. This part is actually the one that takes the most work. Especially when we are working with a significant amount of data.
Imagine having to enter hundreds (or even thousands) of data one by one in each of the cells in the table. The popular copy-paste method can be helpful in certain situations, but it is not enough. On the other hand, the possibility that Word offers us to pass or convert text to table makes the task much easier.
Of course, for the result to be what we are looking for, that text has to be ordered in some logical way. We explain it below in this short tutorial:
Convert text to table step by step
To execute this practical action, you must first take some time to sort the text content for conversion into a table. One of the simplest and most used methods for this is to insert commas between words or phrases, so that Word can take them as a reference to later create the table. A visual example of what we mean, below:
Once the previous sorting work is completed, we can now proceed to use Word's options to convert text into a table. This is what we have to do:
- Firstly, we select the text that we want to convert into a table using the mouse cursor.
- Then, in the Word instrument bar, we click on the option "Insert".
- Then we select "Table".
- In the next box shown, we will «Convert text into table». At this point we will be able to make the following adjustments to configure our table:
- Define the size of the table in rows and columns.
- Choose the autofit mode (by content, by window size, etc.)
- Separate text into paragraphs, commas, tabs, etc.
- After defining the settings, Word will automatically detect the number of rows and columns, as well as the separator. The last step left is to click on the button "To accept" for the table to be generated.
Convert a table to text
Now let's see how you can perform the reverse operation, that is, extracting the content of a table to convert it into text. This is something that in certain circumstances we may need. We explain how to do it:
- The first thing to do is select entire table (or the part that we want to convert to text) with the help of the cursor.
- Next we click on the tab "Design" from the Word toolbar.
- Then we select the option "Convert text to..."
- With this, a dialog box appears on the screen «Convert table to text» in which we will be able to choose which character we want to use to separate the data in the cells (tabs, points, commas, etc.).
- To finish, we press "To accept" and the text will be generated from the content of the table.
Other interesting Word tricks
The ability to convert text to a table is just one of the many resources that Word offers us to achieve better results and save valuable time when we are working with text documents. but there is many other tricks that we can also use and that maybe you don't know yet. Here are some of them:
- Generate a test text to check the format of the document and play with different settings to achieve the final look we are looking for. We explain it in more detail in our post dedicated to Lorem Ipsum.
- count words, but also letters and characters. This is very useful when we have to write a text with a minimum or maximum length.
- Print multiple pages per sheet, which is a very practical solution when having to quickly review a particularly long document.
- Keep date and time updated automatically. It can be very useful when we work as a team, with shared documents, and we want to have control over the progress and modifications that are made to them.
These are just some of the many practical resources that Word offers us to work better. It is worth continuing to explore this tool to get the most out of it.