Okay let me ask you a question: what of all these documents got in common?
A table of contents. an invoice, a menu, CV or resumé, a calendar,
a pricing list? Well they're all created using Canva's new tables feature. Tables in a document
aren't just there to help you create boring old spreadsheets full of mathematical data. Tables
in Canva can be used for all sorts of creative projects and will help you give those projects
an incredibly polished and professional look. So in this tutorial you're going to learn where to
find these Canva tables and how to pop them into a template. We'll then go through some
basic editing tips using real life examples so you can learn how to add and delete columns,
resize those columns and add text. We'll then go on to some more advanced editing
tips so you can create truly professional-looking documents by adding different kinds of borders,
merging cells and even adding colour. So if you're ready to make a start let's go over to Canva.
Start off by selecting the template size you want to use, so just for a change I'm going to select
an A4 document and that will bring up a blank template onto my screen. Now where do you find
the Canva tables? Well it's pretty easy, you go to the left hand side toolbar, click on Elements
and then scroll down until you find Tables. Now you might want to click on 'See all' so
that you open up all the options. And to be honest there aren't very many because really
you will do all the editing from a very simple table. So I'm going to select this one here,
which opens up a very very simple grid onto my template so we have three columns and four rows.
Now let me start off by showing you a few simple editing tips. Adding columns and rows:
To add a new column place your cursor in any one of the cells and you'll see that the cell
is now surrounded by a purple outline which means that the cell is selected.
Now click on these three little dots which appear above the column
and this brings up a menu of editing options. Now all you need to do is go down until you find 'Add
column' and click on it. And there you can see a blank new column has been added to my table.
Alternatively place your cursor within a cell again, hover your mouse over a cell
border to reveal a plus symbol on the outside of the table, now click on it to add a column.
You can do exactly the same for a row, so click your cursor within a cell,
click on the three little dots to the side and go down until you find 'Add row', and click on it.
And that adds a completely blank new row with exactly the same dimensions as the others.
I'll show you how to shift rows or columns once I've added some text so do keep watching.
Deleting rows or columns: if you need to delete a row or a column click on those three little dots
next to the row or column you want to delete, now go down until you find 'Delete row' and
you'll see that when you hover your mouse over 'Delete row' that row is outlined in red, so you
can see exactly what you're deleting. Now click on 'Delete row'. And I'll show you exactly how to do
that with a column. I'm going to click my mouse in a cell within the column I want to delete,
click on the three little dots, hover my mouse over 'Delete column' and you'll see that that
is now outlined in red, and then click ''Delete column'. Incidentally you can reposition tables
anywhere on your document by holding your cursor down over the table and then moving it into place.
Resizing your table: this is so easy to do. As you can probably see on the outside of my table there
are various grab bars at the sides and the bottom, and there are also little buttons in the corners.
To resize the table all you need to do is hold your cursor over one of these
grab bars or little buttons and drag the table out or in again. Resizing a
table with these corner buttons allows you to resize the table so that it maintains
its dimensions. However if you use one of the side grab bars, let me show you what happens,
it will resize your table but the rows or columns will be uneven. To put this right
and ensure all your rows and columns are of equal size place your cursor in one of the table cells
to reveal the three little dots again and click on that. Now go down until you find
'Size rows equally', click on it and you'll see that Canva has adjusted the dimensions so that
all the rows are now of equal size. I'm going to do exactly the same for this column here.
That's it my table is now equally spaced and sized. Perfect! I'll come back to resizing
rows and columns shortly because there are some more advanced tips you need to be aware of when
you begin adding text, so please don't go away. Editing borders: now let's look at editing the
borders of the cells within your table. You can create such interesting and professional effects
once you learn how to do this and it is so easy. Please bear in mind that I'm working with a Mac so
if you're a Windows user these techniques may vary a little. Let's make things easy to begin with by
selecting just one cell, you can see it's selected because it has a purple border. Once selected a
little table editing toolbar will appear right at the top here (let me just minimise this out
of the way so you can see properly), there we are. So this is your Canva table editing toolbar.
Use this to customise your cell colour, the borders, spacing within a table, and these are
the usual text editing tools and I'll come on to this very shortly. To customise your table
borders click on this little grid icon here and that will bring up another little editing menu.
Select the border you want to edit, so the outer borders, top, bottom, left or right,
so I'm going to select the 'Outer borders'. I now have the option to change the line colour
and here are my brand colours here because I've set up my Brand Kit in Canva, so I'm going to
select the pink. And I can now edit the Border Style by clicking on this button here, so I can
select no border at all, a lined border, a dashed border, another dashed boarder or a dotted border,
so I'm going to select a line border. I can change the weight by either typing a figure into this box
here or holding my cursor down over the little button here and sliding it along the slider bar.
Now if I click away you'll see I've added a pink border to this cell here.
So that was really simple and straightforward. So let's take things to a slightly more advanced
level now by selecting multiple cells at the same time and editing the borders.
If you want to select an entire column or row click your cursor in the first cell hold down the
Shift key on a Mac (I'm sorry but I don't know what this would be if you're using Windows but
perhaps somebody could let me know in the comments section) so hold your cursor down in that cell
hold down the Shift button and then click the final cell in that column. And you'll see that
that entire column has now been selected because it's surrounded by a purple outline. If you need
to select the entire table here's a quick Pro Tip: hold your cursor in the first cell in the top left
hand corner, hold down the Shift button and select the last cell in the bottom right hand corner.
And the entire table has been selected. Once done you can now make some really interesting
edits by say adding dotted lines to the inside borders or even removing borders all together.
So let's go back up to the tables toolbar and click on the grid icon again to edit the borders
and I'm now going to select 'Inside borders'. I'm going to change the colour so they're all pink,
and that's now happened, you can see in the table. But I now want to change the inside borders to a
dotted line, so I need to click on this icon here and that's done. You now have pink dotted
inside borders. If you want to remove a border altogether just click on this 'no border' icon
here. This is really useful if you want to use a table as a guide to add content such as text and
photos to create documents with invisible columns or rows. This is really handy in the case of a CV
or resumé, use the table to ensure that all your text is properly aligned and spaced and
then remove the borders completely so you're left with an incredibly professional looking document.
Now let's have a look at adding text and editing text within a table. There are two ways to add
text to a table, it's entirely up to you which method you use because there are pros and cons
with both. The first way is to simply place your cursor within a cell and start typing,
format the text, go to the table toolbar and edit the text in exactly the same way as you
would do normally. Customise the font the size, the colour, the weight, add capital letters,
change the alignment and even add an animation. Please note though that if you do add an animation
it will apply to the whole table not just the text, so be careful. The second way to add text
is to do so in exactly the same way as you would do an ordinary Canva template, so go to the left
hand side toolbar click on 'Text', add a text box, type your text and now drag it into place.
You can now go ahead and edit the text in exactly the same way as usual.
I use this method to create calendars since I want to be very specific about where to place my text.
However there are pitfalls with this method. If you add text to a table in this way and you need
to move the table at some point the text that you added within the table will go with it but
the text that you added separately will not, which could cause you problems. But if I put this table
back again, if I add an animation to this text it will only affect the text and not the table as a
whole. So you can see there are pros and cons with both methods so you need to decide what suits your
project best and how confident you feel using each method. Okay, so those are the basic edits. Now
let's look at how to create really professional looking documents with Canva tables by customising
the text within tables, moving rows and columns, merging cells and even adding some colour. So
I'm going to use my menu template to show you how to customise some text within tables. I've added
my text but I want to change them. So if you've already added text to a table and you decide you
want to change the font for example don't panic because you can do it in just a couple of clicks.
You can change the font in the usual way as you would do in any Canva template by selecting one
cell, go up to the font pull-down menu and find the font that you want to use instead,
so I want to swap this font with Glacial Indifference. And then you can make the most
of this very powerful Canva 'Change All' feature which is right at the bottom of this column here.
So what it does is change all instances of one font within a template, and that really
does mean ALL instances of one font in a template with another. So I'm going to click on Change All
and you'll see that the font within this template has completely changed to my chosen font. I'm just
going to move this table up a bit, that's it. Moving rows or columns: once you've added text
to a table you might need to move a specific column or row to the left or right, up or down,
so let me show you how it's done. So select a column or row as I showed you previously.
Now I'm going to find those three little dots right at the top of the column and click on them,
and you can see here I can now move the column to the right. So I'm going to click on that
and you can see what's happened. Do exactly the same with a row, so let me just show you.
I want to move this row underneath this row so I'm going to select the final cell in that row,
click on the three little dots and I want to move the row down, and that's done. Now at the start
of this tutorial I mentioned I was going to show you how to adjust the size of rows or columns when
you have text inside them. So there might be an occasion when you want to adjust the dimensions
of a row or column according to the text inside. So using this menu as an example the column on the
left has much more text than the column on the right, so it looks so much better if I adjusted
the width of this column and reduce the width of this column. So what I'm going to do is place my
cursor in any of the cells in this column, click on these three little dots to the side of the
column to bring up the editing menu and then I'm going to find where it says right at the bottom
'Size columns to content'. So I'm going to click on that and you'll see the left hand side column
has now been adjusted to accommodate the text and the right hand column has been reduced in size. But
I am going to increase it just a little bit so that it looks a little bit better, I'm going to
reposition the table slightly. Fantastic! I'll repeat this process again whilst you watch.
That's much better, now I'm going to run through some of these techniques once again whilst you
watch because I'm now going to show you how to merge cells and add some colour as well.
So now you have all the skills you need to create beautiful projects in Canva using tables.
I have an entire playlist of Canva tips and tricks which you can check out right here,
that's coming up in just a moment. If you enjoyed this video please
give it a thumbs- up subscribe to my channel and I will see you next time.