Making WORD TABLES look good in PowerPoint

When you copy and paste tables from Word into PowerPoint, the results can be nasty.
The same is true of tabular data from Excel. For tips on bringing Excel tables into PowerPoint, see EXCEL INFO CUT OFF when pasted into PowerPoint

How to bring tables from Word into PowerPoint

• Click anywhere within the table then choose Table>Select Table to select the entire table
• Choose Edit>Copy to copy the table to the clipboard
• Switch to PowerPoint and choose Edit>Paste Special
• In the Paste Special dialog box, select "Microsoft Word Object". Optionally, choose Link.
• Use either Format>Object: Size to resize it, or shift-drag a corner of the table. Don't drag the sides of the table or you'll distort it and it'll look bad.
• If you need to change the color of the table's text or lines, right click it and choose Format Object. On the Picture tab, click Recolor. You'll be able to reassign any of the colors in the table to colors that will work better with your PowerPoint color scheme.

Note: If the right border of the table is missing, double click the table to open it for editing and then drag the right boundary of the object out until the missing border re-appears. You can only do this if the table hasn't been Paste Special, Linked.

Linked tables open for editing in Word itself, not in-place within PowerPoint. Do linked tables have fewer problems with missing borders in the first place? Let me know if you've tried it both ways and discovered differences. Thanks!

Thanks to PPT newsgroup member JH for suggesting this FAQ and to MVP Kathy Huntzinger for the writeup.

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