Setting Consistent Shading

If you need to work with documents from other Word users, you may have a need to change the formatting that is applied to tables within those documents. For instance, you may need all tables to have 10% shading applied. Applying the shading over and over again can be tedious, however.

There are a couple of things you can do to speed up your formatting task. If you don't have many tables to process, then you will appreciate these steps if you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007:

1. Select a table cell that doesn't have any shading.
2. Display the Borders and Shading dialog box. (Choose Borders and Shading from the Format menu.)
3. Make sure the Shading tab is displayed. (Click here to see a related figure.)
4. Choose the color and percentage (Style) you want used for the cell.
5. Click OK to accept the formatting. It is applied to the cell.
6. Put the insertion point inside any cell of a table, but don't select the entire cell.
7. Press F4. Word applies the last action (the shading) to the entire table.
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for any other tables you want to format.

If you are using Word 2007 follow these steps:

1. Select a table cell that doesn't have any shading.
2. Make sure the Design tab of the ribbon is displayed.
3. Click the Shading tool in the Table Styles group. Word displays a drop-down palette of choices.
4. Click the color and percentage you want used for the cell. The formatting is applied.
5. Select the other cells in the table that you want to shade.
6. Press F4. Word applies the last action (the shading) to the selected cells.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for any other tables you want to format.

If you have many, many tables you want to format, you might want to create a macro to do the shading for you. The following simple macro steps through each table in a document and applies the 10% shading.

Sub TableShading()
    For Each aTable In ActiveDocument.Tables
    aTable.Shading.Texture = wdTexture10Percent
    Next aTable
End Sub

There are other approaches you can take, as well. (Word is nothing, if not flexible.) For instance, you could create a table style that could be applied to your tables, or you could create an AutoFormat for your tables.