Create Excel Table & Everything You Need To Know

In this tutorial you will know everything about Excel Table including how to create it, its useful features and important parts, along with how to manage the table.

A table in excel if you don’t know is a powerful tool and useful however most often neglected and underrated. Once you make use of it, you will discover how this feature can save much of your time and organizing your data is much easier.

What is Excel Table

The Excel table is a container that organizes the data wherein managing content in the rest of the worksheet independently is easy. In Excel 2007 up to the latest version table is useable to convert the usual range and format into a table in excel wherein it is an improved feature of Excel 2003 List feature.

Excel Table can do a lot of things mainly providing an array to analyze the managed data particularly calculated columns, total rows, auto-filter and sort options, automatic expansion of a table, and more.

Generally, the table contains the related data inserted in a rows and columns though it consists of single row and column. For instance, imagine a room without a closet or a kitchen without a cupboard it would be messed up especially having a lot of things.

Hence, it works the same way in your data without a container mainly in a table format. So the figure below shows what’s the difference between a usual range and in table range.

Range of cell
Range of cell
table range
table range

Parts of Table

This time we will know the various parts of the table here are the following:

  1. Column Header Row — This is the first row that contains the headers of the columns and identifies that data is belong in the column. It should be unique and cannot be left empty otherwise it contains a column name but can not contain a formula. column header row
  2. Body — It is where your data can be found and entered. Body
  3. Row — It is the body of the table which can contain one or more rows wherein you delete entire rows it will remain single blank cell. Row
  4. Column — It is a table must contain at least one column. column
  5. Total Row — This could be the last row of the table thus it could be contained the formula or just a blank cell. But by default it is not included in the table. Total row

How to create Excel table

Technically we have always mistaken that every time we entered data in excel we assume it is a table already. Wherein actually we need to format it as a table.

Time needed: 3 minutes

There are three simple ways to create table in Excel.

  1. Creating a table using the default table style.

    First, organize the columns and rows then click on your data. On the Insert tab find the Table group and Click Table.
    Insert table in Excel

  2. Use Format as Table in style group of Home tab

    This time in the Home tab in the style group select Format as Table and select presets design of table depending on your liking.
    Format As Table

  3. Create table using keyboard shortcut

    This way is easy and intended for those who like to use keyboard shortcuts in doing a task. All you need to do is press CTRL+T and this will automatically create a table.

    Ctrl T

    As you observed any of these ways you chose the entire data is selected automatically. To assure its correct check the range of cells selected and you may uncheck or check my table has headers option depending on your list of data.
    Create table dialog box

    The finished table displayed below:

    table range

Important and Useful Features of Excel

Name Excel Table

Typically, when you create a table it initially starts the name from Table 1 and consecutively increases. Hence you can change a name to a precisely descriptive short name.

However, you cannot name a table in any name, there are a few rules in table naming. So I have a list here to refer to:

  • The name of the must be unique from other workbooks.
  • You can use numbers and letters as well as underscore though other special characters and spaces are not allowed.
  • A table must begin in letters or underscore not in a number.
  • It only handles up to 255 characters.

To rename your table just go Table Design>Properties group>type your table name and press ENTER.

rename table
rename table

Sort Excel Table

One of the advantages of tables in excel is you can sort data. These are the following steps to execute:

  • First Click the arrow next to the income column and sort from smallest to largest
  • Then Click the arrow next to the product column and sort from A to Z.
sort table in excel

Excel Table Design

Excel provides easy formatting once you created a new table it provides a variety of banded rows, borders, shading and so on. Mainly the purpose of this is to change the default style if you want to change the design of the table.

You can locate it in the Table Design tab and table styles.

Table Design Tab

 Automatic table expansion

Excel Tables automatically expand when you are going to add new rows or columns. This is a lot of convenient feature of Excel table. This happens because Excel assumes when you enter the data there should be another format or could be another reformatting.

Total Row

One of the features in the table is you can quickly add the total of the data. This display is at the end of the table and allows you to select the function needed to comply with the task.

All you need to do is click any cell in the table and on the table design>table design option group check the total row.

Total row location
Total row location

The result is shown below, choose your preferred function want.

Total row
Total row

Conclusion

In conclusion, the topic about Excel table is very helpful in organizing data as well as making it easy to format, sort, and filter data. Thus it is pleasing to someone’s eyes wherein it has a lot of styles and formatting that will meet and suit your data.

What is your thought about this article? Free to leave your comment below.

Thank you for reading! 🙂

Leave a Comment