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• Word 2007 Tutorial
• Explore the interface of Word 2007
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• The Zoom tool in Word 2007
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• Insert a table
• Insert a cell
• Delete a cell
• Insert a row
• Delete a row
• Insert a column
• Delete a column
• Split a cell
• Merge cells
• Resize rows (+ row height settings)
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Insert a cell in a table with Microsoft Word 2007

Once you have created a table in Word 2007, you can easily customize the table by adding or removing cells, rows, and columns. This tutorial explains how to add a cell to a pre-existing Microsoft Word table. We will also let you anticipate Word's behavior when cells are added beyond the table boundaries, like adding a cell in a row who already has the maximum number of columns (or cells) in the table.

Add a table cell in Word 2007

To add a cell in a table, right-click in one of the nearest cells in the table and choose Insert > Insert Cells.

Word 2007 will open the Insert Cells dialog, which lets you choose where the new cell should be created in the table, with four possible insertion options: Shift cells right, Shift cells down, Insert entire row, and Insert entire column.

We will explain each of these options:

Insert cell option # 1: Shift cells right

If you choose Shift cells right and click OK, Word 2007 will create a new cell on the left of the cell in which you right-clicked (thus shifting other cells to the right).


In the screenshot above, we can see that Microsoft Word inserted a new cell (highlighted in blue) on the left of the cell (number 2) in which we right-clicked.

Insert cell option # 2: Shift cells down (default)

The default option is Shift cells down: this command instructs Word to insert a new cell above the cell in which we right-clicked, which has the effect of pushing down the cell into a new row of its own:

Insert cell option # 3: Insert entire row

If you choose Insert entire row, Microsoft Word will create a brand new table row above the row containing the cell in which you right-clicked:

Insert cell option # 4: Insert entire column

The final option Word 2007 gives you in inserting cells into a table is "Insert entire column" - this command will literally add a cell before the cell in which you right-clicked for every row, in effect creating a new column on the left of the cell and its up-and-down neighbors:

...And this covers the four ways in which Microsoft Word 2007 lets you insert individual cells in a table; as we saw, two of these cell insertion command actually correspond to adding an entire row or creating an entire column. The next tutorial will explain how to delete a cell in a Word 2007 table, and the behavior you expect from Microsoft Word in several cases.