Tips for wrapping text around a Word table Word lets you drag and drop a table into the middle of a paragraph and the result might be just what you want. If not, reset the table's position properties. Go to the (Table Tools) Layout tab. Click an Align button (you may have to click the Alignment button first, depending on the size of your screen). The following figure shows where the Align buttons are on the (Table Tools) Layout tab and how these options align text in a table.

Tables are a powerful formatting tool used in many Word documents. Often it is necessary to center information within the cells of a table. There are two ways to center information: horizontally and vertically. Horizontal centering is quite simple. All you need to do is position the insertion point somewhere within the text and then click on the Center button on the Home tab of the ribbon or on the Formatting toolbar.

Centering text vertically is almost as easy: • Right-click on the cell containing the information you want to vertically center. This displays a Context menu for the cell. • Choose the Alignment (Word 97) or Cell Alignment (Word 2000 or later) option from the Context menu. This displays a submenu. • Choose the Center Vertically option.

You should note that vertical centering will not give the desired results if you have the paragraph formatting for the text set to anything except single spacing, with no space before or after the paragraph. This extra spacing before or after affects the centering in the same way that paragraph indents affect horizontal spacing.

As a web & mobile app developer, I have to use MSWord & Excel frequently in my database work. The text on this page declares, 'Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.' It's only that because MicroSoft got there first, not because of the quality of the program.

Nothing costs me more time in my work than dealing with the inefficiency and sloppy, thoughtless programming of these applications. The fact that I'm having to spend nearly a half hour researching how to get text to vertically center in a table cell—only to find (thus far) that it can only be done on a Per-Cell basis)—is evidence. For one of the richest companies in the World, MicroSoft authors the most dysfunctional programs the computing age has ever seen, and continues to do so. The only way I have come up with for dealing with the frustrations of using these programs is to imagine that I'm trying to work with a retarded child, and not expect anything more than that in return.

Thank you, Allan Wyatt, for being here for us, and getting us through this nonsense called MicroSoft.