Designing PowerPoint Table Styles – Best Practices
Custom table styles are an important part of a PowerPoint template. But you should be aware of what you can and cannot expect when designing PowerPoint table styles. The program has a few shortcomings when compared to custom table styles in Word.
Items that can be set in a PowerPoint table style
In a table style, it’s possible to set
- the text size and style for the table,
- the line weight, style and color for horizontal and vertical internal borders, plus the top, bottom, left and right edge borders, and
- the banding color for even and odd rows and/or columns.
A custom table style can be set to be the default style, so inserting a table automatically applies that custom format.
A table style can display optional Header and Total Rows and First and Last Columns that have different formatting than the rest of the table. The shading and borders of these parts can be different from the main body of the table. The text size should be the same, but the text color, bolding and/or italicization can vary. On the Table Design tab the Table Style Options allows users to turn these design features on and off, so a single table style can have multiple appearances if you design for them:
A table style can display row band shading between the rows when banding is turned on, then rules can appear if the user turns banding off.
Table Style Options – Default, No Options, Banded Columns, Multiple Options
By default, when a table is added, the Header Row and Banded Row options are automatically selected. If your design doesn’t included banded row shading, the Banded Row option will have no effect.
Table Style Options – Header Row, First Column, Last Column, Total Row
Table Style Options – Corner Cells
In addition, the corner cells (upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right) can have unique formatting. In the example shown, if the user turns on both Header row and First Column, then the unique formatting for the upper left cell is displayed.
Items that cannot be set in a PowerPoint table style
PowerPoint table styles do not include:
- varying horizontal or vertical text alignment within cells. All new tables will have all text top-aligned. All text can be preset to one of left-, center- or right-aligned.
- row height or column width. All new tables have equally sized rows and columns.
- cell margins. All new table have cell margins of 0.05″ top and bottom and 0.1″ left and right.
- multiple header rows. A new table can only have a single header row.
- selected cells in different colors. All cells in a given part of a table will have uniform formatting.
If you design depends on any of these, a table can be created as a sample that a user can copy and paste to reuse.
Office tables are purely rectangular. Tables cannot have rounded corners or racetrack headers. If your design includes rounded corners, we can create a sample table with graphic shapes laid over top of the table. These shapes are not groupable with the table, so copying and pasting can be a little trickier for users.
Best Practices in Designing PowerPoint table styles
Tables can have their own set of up to 9 text levels (PowerPoint’s equivalent to styles). This set of text levels is shared among all tables in the template. By default, when a table is inserted, all text uses first level text styling.
Although it is possible for a user to change table text levels using Home>Paragraph>Increase List Level (Windows) or Home>Indent More (macOS), few users are aware of this command and even fewer will use it. It’s not at all intuitive. In consequence, all the text for a table should be designed to be the same size, and all table designs in a presentation need to use the same size. Otherwise, users will simply not create tables that follow your design.
Creating PowerPoint Table Styles
If you want to try creating custom table styles in PowerPoint, please read my articles on the subject:
OOXML Hacking: Custom Table Styles
OOXML Hacking: Table Styles Complete
OOXML Hacking: Default Table Text
Mac users should read OOXML Hacking: Editing in macOS to find methods for editing OOXML on a Mac.
