Table Maker

Table Maker is a tool that can be used in the formatting rounds.

Click on the "Table Maker" link in the proofing interface. That'll give you a popup tool.

Step 1: Tell it how many rows & columns the table has, whether you want the outside border to be drawn in, and whether you want spaces at the left & right sides to be included. Click on "Create" when you've made your choices. The tool will create text boxes, one for each table cell, for you to fill in.

Step 2: Copy the text for each table cell into the corresponding box in the tool. When you're done, hit "Draw," and the tool will create the table in the text box at the bottom of the window. The tool does not rewrap the cell contents, so if text needs to be wrapped for any reason, you'll have to do that yourself.

Step 3: Adjust the alignment settings for each row & column, if they aren't the way you want them.

Step 4: Adjust the table until you think it looks good. You can adjust the table parameters at the top of the window and hit "Create" to add or remove rows/columns, or to change the border/space-trimming options. If you add rows/columns, they will be added to the bottom/right; existing cells will not change. If you remove rows/columns, the bottom/right ones are the ones that will be removed. You can hit "Draw" at any time to redraw the table based on the current cell contents & alignment settings. "Clear" will remove all the text from all the cells and leave you with a completely blank table. There is no "Undo" from a clear, so be careful with it!

Step 5: When you've got it looking good, copy & paste the table from the bottom text box into the proofing window.

The things I particularly don't like about the table tool are: If you've got more than one line of text in a cell, you often have to copy & paste each line into the tool separately. The tool always puts borders on the inside of the table between cells; there's no way to have it use spaces instead.