Those who are familiar with the rich formatting features of Excel may long for a way to format numbers in a Word table just as easily. For instance, you may have a column of numbers that you want to format as currency, complete with the dollar sign. Unfortunately, Word does not allow you to do this type of formatting directly.

There is a work-around, however. You can use a field to insert any number you want in any format you want. For instance, let's say you have the number 65.78, and you want it formatted as currency in a particular table cell. All you need to do is follow these steps:

1. Position the insertion point in the table cell where the number will reside.
2. Press Ctrl+F9 to insert a pair of field braces.
3. Type the equal sign, followed by the number (65.78).
4. Type a space, followed by \# and another space. This switch tells Word that you are about to specify the format for the number.
5. Enter the format specification, in quote marks. In this case, you would enter "$#,###.00".
6. Press Shift+F9 to collapse the completed field.

You can continue to insert numbers in this way. If you have quite a few of them, you may want to create a macro to automate the process. Entering numbers in this way will not affect your ability to create column totals, as well.