Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual

Selecting Parts of a Table

Tables and their cells have independent properties. For example, a table and a cell can have different alignment properties. But before you can change any of these properties, you must first select the tables, rows, columns, or cells you want to affect.

Selecting a Table

You can select a table in the document window a number of ways:

• Click the upper-left corner of the table, or anywhere on the bottom edge. (Be careful using the latter technique, however. It’s easy to accidentally drag the border, adding a height property to the first table cell in the bottom row.)

• Click anywhere inside the table, and then select the <table> tag in the document window’s status bar (see The Insert Panel to learn about the Tag selector).

• Click anywhere inside the table, and then choose Modify→Table→Select Table.

• Right-click (Control-click) inside a table, and then, from the shortcut menu, choose Table→Select Table.

• If the insertion point is in any cell inside the table, pressing Ctrl+A (⌘-A) twice selects the table.

Once selected, a table appears with a thick black border and three tiny, square resize handles—at the right edge, bottom edge, and lower-right corner.

Selecting Rows or Columns

You can also select an entire row or column of cells by doing one of the following:

• Move your cursor to the left edge of a row or the top edge of a column. When it changes to a right- or down-pointing arrow, click, as explained in Figure 7-4.

• Click a cell at either end of a row, or the first or last ...