In addition to changing the records within a table, you can also customize the way that
the table looks.
And this can help to make the table easier to read.
The first thing we're going to do is resize the cells.
In this example, the Description field is too wide, and I want to adjust it so it will
fit on the screen.
To change the width of a field, just hover over a gridline… and you should see the
cursor change to a cross with arrows.
And then click and drag until the width looks right.
The problem with this is that now the descriptions get cut off.
So I need to make the rows taller so I can see the entire description for each item…
and you'll notice that when you change the row height, all of the rows in the table will
change to be the same height.
Sometimes, you'll have some extra fields that you don't really need to see all the time,
and you can just hide them so that you can focus on the fields that you want.
Just right-click the field name… and select Hide Fields.
If you want to show them again, right-click any of the field names and go to Unhide Fields…
and you'll be able to select the ones that you want to see.
Normally, the row colors will alternate between white and some other color, and this helps
to make it easier to read.
If you want, you can change the color by going to the Alternate Row Color drop-down arrow…
and that's found on the Home tab in the Text Formatting group.
And you'll probably want to choose a light color so the text will have plenty of contrast.
You can also control which gridlines are shown… and you can even have no gridlines at all.
I'll go with the horizontal gridlines.
And finally, In the bottom-right corner of the Text Formatting group, you can click this
little arrow to go to the Datasheet Formatting dialog box.
And here you have some other formatting options that you can choose, including background
color… and gridline color.
And you can see a preview of the formatting here.
So experiment with the different formatting options, to create the view you're most comfortable
with.