Style tables

Your organisation's table paragraph styles live under the Object tab in the Paragraph Styles panel (Document group → Styles).

The most common styles you'll need:

• Table title: The table's number and caption
• Table head: Table column-head cells at the top of the Word table
• Table body: Table body cells
• Table footnote: Table footnotes. Note: You can use this style for table legends—paragraphs that fall after the table body and span the width of the table but are not cited from within the table as a table footnote

Applying table styles

You can manually apply styles to a table the same way you apply any other paragraph style: select a paragraph in the Paragraph Styles panel and click the style you want. By default, this applies the selected style to the entire row of cells.

Clicking through a large table cell by cell would be slow, so the Paragraph Styles panel also lets you style several cells in a table at once. Move your cursor into the cell you want to start from, then hold one of the following keys while clicking a style button:

Modifier	Applies the style to
(none)	The entire row, from the current cell to the end of the row.
Shift	Every cell from the current cell to the end of the table.
Control	One paragraph within the current cell at a time.
Shift + Control	One cell at a time.

TIP

Shift is especially useful once you reach the point in a table where everything remaining should use the same style—for example, the rest of a long table body. Hold Shift and click that style, and Orion styles the rest of the table for you in one action.

Style simple tables

The following example shows the correct location of table paragraph styles in a simple table.

Table 1. This is a table title. It may be located within the table grid or outside of it.

Table head	Table head	Table head
Table body*	Table body	Table body
Table body	Table body	Table body

*This is a table footnote.

Style complex tables

Paragraph styles in a table aren't limited to whole rows—you can apply them more selectively for specific formatting needs. For example, if a table has row headers at a section break in the middle of a table, you can apply your table head style to those rows instead of your table body style.

TIP

Use a dedicated subhead style (for example, Table Subhead) to keep it visually distinct from the table's main header row.

You can also style content inside a single cell, such as a list.

Move your cursor into the cell and hold Control while clicking a style to style one paragraph in that cell at a time, or Shift + Control to style the whole cell in one click.

Table head	Table head	Table head
Table body*	Table body	List Level 1 List Level 1
Table body	Table body	Table body
Table head	Table head	Table head
Table body	Table body	List Level 1 List Level 1

*This is a table footnote.

How styling a table is different

Word tables come with a few quirks that Orion accounts for when you style them this way:

• Empty cells are skipped, so you won't accidentally style a blank cell.
• If a cell's entire content is already bold, italic, or underlined, Orion keeps that formatting rather than overwriting it.
• Alignment and indents you've already applied to a paragraph are kept.