Preserve your document’s flow — wrap text around your tables (Word 2003/2007)

When creating documents with tables, you may often find it necessary to wrap text around tables. You might expect that such a feat requires multiple steps, but actually Word’s text wrapping and positioning features allow you to easily format text around tables.

To wrap text around your table:

1. Click in the table and select Table | Table Properties from the menu bar to open the Table Properties dialog box.
2. On the Table tab in the Text Wrapping pane, select Around.
3. Click OK.

Now that your text wraps around your table, you might want to control the distance between the table and your text.

To adjust your wrapped text position:

1. In the Table Properties dialog box in the Text Wrapping pane, click Positioning. This opens the Table Positioning dialog box.
2. Use the Distance From Surrounding Text settings to increase or decrease the distance between the wrapped text and the table. We changed the top setting to 0", the bottom to 0.1", the left to 0.25", and the right to 0.25".
3. Click OK.

To wrap text around a table in Word 2007, click in the table so that the Table Tools ribbon appears with two tabs: Layout and Design. On the Layout tab, in the Table group, click the Properties button to display the same Table Properties dialog box you know from earlier versions. Alternatively, you can right-click on the table and choose Table Properties from the resulting shortcut menu.