Microsoft just made it easier to manage tables in Word documents

Do you often have difficulties with tables in Microsoft Word, mainly when working online? The people at Microsoft have been hearing our shared exasperated breaths. For those who are into the details, they’ve made a good number of updates to improve editing tables in Word on the web. Here’s everything you need to know.

First things first, rows and columns are a piece of cake. Close your eyes and picture this: you’re working on a table. You want to add one more row or column to it. In the past, this probably required some clicks that felt excessive for comfort’s sake.

But now, float your cursor over where you want the new row or column to be, and tada! There’s a plus sign appearing. Give it a click, and it will be created. You don’t have to navigate around menus or right-click search anymore.

Now you can effortlessly insert a row or column into a table right where you need it with a single click, without having to right-click or access the ribbon to make your changes. You can also move an existing row or column to a new location in the table quickly and easily (no cutting or pasting necessary).

Microsoft

But what if you have to change the order of some data inside your table in Microsoft Word? Moving rows and columns around is as simple as pie now. Move the mouse pointer on top of the row or column you wish to shift, then click on four dots that show up and drag it towards the new place where it will be settled in its fresh location. A friendly blue line assists you in relocating items, making sure you place your data precisely where it needs to be dropped.

In a blog post, Microsoft says that these updates are currently only available to people who use Targeted Release in Word for the web. However, by September 2024, the plan is to make them available to all users. So, if you don’t see these options yet, have patience—they’re coming soon.

In other news, Microsoft Word also supports Draft with Copilot, which sees the AI model coming with drafts to all your documents and using data and information from it to summarize and edit your writing.

But what are your thoughts on these updates? Do you believe they will improve your document editing experience, or is there another area where you hope Microsoft can progress? Let us know your experience with it.