Images get a lot of attention when people talk about making PowerPoint presentations, but text is what really makes a presentation matter. Text is the heart of any PowerPoint presentation because it is a fundamental component. We have written a few articles on the topic of formatting text for PowerPoint in the past. For times when you should use text instead of images. Some general text formatting tips, and ways to present text with images. Today, we will be talking about formatting text for tables in PowerPoint.

Formatting Text in a Table

For the most part, text formatting works the same in tables as it works elsewhere in PowerPoint. You can change the font, size, color, alignment, etc just as you would anywhere else in PowerPoint. You can also apply separate formatting for individual words and even add bullet point formatting inside table cells now.

Inserting Tabs in a Table’s Cell

You would normally press the tab key where you want to insert a tab, but that is not how it works in tables, does it? No, it doesn’t. In fact when you press tab, it just moves you to the next cell. To insert a tab in a table, use the keyboard key combination Ctrl+Tab. This will only add a tab in that individual cell.

Ruler and Alignment in a Table

Each cell in the table has its own ruler. So if you click in a cell, and add alignment tabs, they only apply for that individual cell. This can get confusing if you’re used to the way things worked in the previous versions of PowerPoint.

You can do almost all other formatting any way you want. It should work just like it always does. But, make sure to preview the presentation before using it. Make sure that the formatting looks the way you intended.