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Using Tables to Arrange a Page

Composer uses tables to allow you to split your page up into sections. Each section will feature a different element of your page. You'll want to play with adding tables of different sizes and shapes to your page until you like the way the page is divided. Here's how to add tables to a new page in Composer.

Earth: Creating the layout of a page

How To

1. Once you have opened a new document in Composer you can use the Table button to create a new table.
Click this button to begin a table.
2. The first step in creating a table is to set the table properties. There are two tabs on this menu. The choices on each tab are explained below.

Size: this box allows you to set the number of rows and columns that your page will be split into. You can set the size of each of the rows and columns either as their height in pixels or as the percentage of the page that they will occupy.

Borders and Spacing: These settings let you decide how wide the borders between cells will be and whether there will be additional space between the cells. If you set these values to zero your table will be invisible to the viewer.

Table Alignment: Just as you set the alignment of text in a Word doc, you can set the alignment of your table on your page. Left is the most common setting.

Background Color: If you would like the color of the cells in your table to be a different color than the background of your page you can change it here.

The Cell menu allows you to change the appearance of individual cells, rows, or columns.

Selection: Use these tools to select the cell, row, or column that you would like to adjust.

Size: In this menu you can adjust the size of a cell, row, or column.

Content Alignment: These tools allow you to set the alignment of text or images within a cell.

Cell Style: This toggle sets a box's contents to be regular text or a header. If the cell you are adjusting is the title box you may want to set this to header.

Text Wrap: Select this to allow text in a cell to wrap instead of moving off the right edge of the cell.

Background Color: You can set the color of a single cell, row, or column with this tool.

This table was created in Composer. You can see that the border is thick and that the three of the cells have had their background color set to something other than the page's background color.

Play with the table settings to add more columns and rows or to change the background colors of cells until you have a look that fits your idea.

Once your table is set the way you want it you can begin to insert images and text into each of the boxes.