How To Align Tables And Images In Microsoft Word
Have you ever tried to move a picture or a table around in a Microsoft Word document? The results are usually a small scale disaster. Moving these two elements around ruins a perfectly formatted document. In order to move either of these items around, you should always use the cut and paste functions, and use their own dedicated alignment tools to fix formatting problems that might arise after. Here’s how you can align tables and images in Microsoft Word.
Align Tables
Insert a table in your document. Right-click inside any cell. It doesn’t matter if the cell has data in it or not. From the context menu, select the Table Properties option. The Table Properties window has several tabs that deal with the alignment and other aspects of a table. Make sure you’re on the Table tab and not any of the other tabs i.e., the row, column, or cell tabs.
The Table tab has an alignment section where you can choose how you want to align it. If your table is small, and you want the text to take up the empty space around the table instead of appearing after it, go to the Text Wrapping section, and select ‘Around’. Next, click the Positioning button and you can set in inches where you want the table to be added. You can also drag the table around and drop it where you want to position it but we all know that will turn into a disaster.
Align Images
For images, there are similar options. By default, all tables and images follow the same alignment as the text that preceded it. Additionally, the text wrapping is always set to in-line which means no element will overlap the other one.
Insert an image and right-click it. From the context menu, select Wrap Text>More Layout Options.
This will open a new window called Layout. If you want the image to not align with the text, you must choose an option other than ‘In line with text’. Don’t use the Behind text option unless you’re trying to insert a watermark, and don’t use the in front of text option either or the text will be blocked. The others allow you to freely move the image around wherever you want.
There aren’t any options for aligning an image left or right. You have to go to the Position tab where you can set horizontal and/or vertical alignment. Select the alignment option and open the dropdown next to it. Select how you want to align the image. The alignment can be relative to the page, the top, or bottom margins, or the current line.
