Corporate Tables guarantees that your tables created in Excel, Word and PowerPoint reflect your organization's visual identity. To get started with the implementation, the first step is to provide us with the design features your tables should follow. This article explains how to hand-in this design to ensure a swift implementation.

Where is Corporate Tables implemented?

Corporate Tables is usually placed in an additional tab in Microsoft Office along with other tools specific to your organization. There is one basic Corporate Tables button named Create/Format which can be used to insert a new table or format an existing one into your design, depending on selection - if nothing is currently selected, the feature will insert a new one, but if you select an existing table, it will be formatted with configured settings. Furthermore, the option to Delete Table, Merge Cells and Split Cells is also part of the basic set of Corporate Tables functionalities/buttons.

These buttons can be supplemented with other features if needed, e.g. functionality to highlight columns, rows or cells. You can find an overview of possible extra features to streamline the users' interaction with tables here.

How does Corporate Tables work?

It is possible to have different table designs (1). In such cases, the button will be a drop-down menu that contains the different designs. When the design is picked the functionality of Corporate Tables is based on Office's native tables functionality, meaning that the feature will open the same dialog box in which the user can choose the number of rows and columns of the table (2), and then Corporate Tables ensures to apply the correct colors, fonts, sizes, etc.

We build the buttons in your ribbon based on your specifications and needs.

Where should I design my Corporate Tables?

Directly in Office! This is where the functionality is added and Corporate Tables will only work within the limitations of Office. If you use InDesign or any other program when creating the table design, it can be difficult to have the possibilities and limitations in mind, and thus add elements that might not be supported.

We, therefore, recommend that you start your design process with a default Office table. To do this, go to the Insert tab in Word, PowerPoint or Excel, and click Table.

Insert a table, and use the possibilities of table adjustments offered by Office. This could be the Table Design tab (1) which appears along with table insertion or use the right-click option to open the Table Properties (2).

Do not place external elements, like shapes or boxes that are not supported by tables in Office (because they cannot be inserted by one of the adjustment possibilities above) and therefore not by Corporate Tables.

To sum up: if your design is not possible to manually create with the possibilities offered by Office, it is not supported by Corporate Tables and thus the design will not be applicable.

What is possible to adjust in my design?

The following is possible to adjust:

Table background color: color, accent color, or no color.
Font: font, font size, color, align font with Word style.
Line spacing: in points or defined rules (double, at least, exactly, single, multiple).
Paragraph spacing: before and after spacing.
Alignment: vertically: top, center, bottom, and horizontally: left, right, distributed, justify, general (text will be left-aligned and numbers will be right-aligned in Excel, can fall back to left, right, or ignored in Word and PowerPoint), decimal alignment.
Margins: left, top, right, bottom.
Borders: weight and type (solid, dash, dot, dash dot etc.).
Banded rows/columns: font, colors, spacing, alignment, margins, banding type.
Unique first row: font, colors, spacing, alignment, margins.
Unique last row: font, colors, spacing, alignment, margins.
Unique first column: font, colors, spacing, alignment, margins.
Unique last column: font, colors, spacing, alignment, margins.

Which files should I hand in?

We recommend that you hand in a design for each Office application if the design differs, meaning please forward a .docx file with your tables in Word, a .pptx with your PowerPoint tables, and a .xlsx for Excel. Note that if the design does not differ or only requires a few adjustments, we need only one of the above-mentioned files along with a note explaining the difference. Forward each of these to our representative.

Our clients typically use the same design across all Office applications, where the only exception could be the font size in PowerPoint, as PowerPoint usually uses an increased font size compared to Word and Excel.