Tables have a wide variety of academic and workplace use cases. In fact, in most of my past job functions, I had to use tables extensively to enhance interdepartmental collaborations. Nevertheless, the most notable and recent use of tables is the academic planner I made when I first enrolled at Mount SAC last summer. For those curious about what it looks like,  I will attach a visual copy of that academic planner at the end of the Excel-specific discussion forum later this week so that you can visualize how powerful tables can be. So, in short, what I did with that academic planner was to jot down all the classes I must take to satisfy both associates and transfer requirements and group them together in a single, easy-to-navigate, and at-a-glance spreadsheet. Unfortunately, I am not particularly a fan of generating tables in Word, primarily due to the various formatting issues concerning printing and cell inconsistencies. Instead, I would highly prefer Excel because it resolves many of these issues. Nonetheless, since the primary focus of this discussion is Word, we will redirect our focus back to Word tables. However, l do believe that it would be a fun little experiment to quickly compare and contrast the various advantages and drawbacks between Word tables and Excel. So, on top of the cell inconsistencies and formatting, another major drawback of Word tables is the cell’s inability to perform calculations, apply conditional formatting, and implement time-saving functions, all of which are extremely useful for improving efficiencies. I will elaborate a bit more on this portion of things on the Excel-specific forum, but Word is not without its advantages. The key advantage of Word tables is that you could potentially use them to create a fillable PDF in a table format. Once that form is complete, you could convert the .docx file into a .pdf file, which will resolve the printing issue because the purpose of PDF is to protect and retain the original formatting from the host computer and display it just as it is on the other device. Another very beneficial advantage of Word tables, quite frankly, is the ability to perform spell checks. This is because Excel was designed to store permanent user input data, so it does not inherently provide spell checks because it will assume and expects that the user knows what they have inputted and that it is, in fact, accurate. Word, on the other hand, does not automatically assume that because it is a word processing software that looks religiously for user flaws and tries to catch all grammar and spelling mistakes. Although it does not always catch them, it is still better than not having it at all. Therefore, if you need to present a brief and not-so-detailed report to your stakeholders, you are better off using Word because it will help you catch some of these errors. If you need to present data sets, you can simply insert or copy a narrower table with a specific set of data from a more extensive and comprehensive spreadsheet.

Responses to the professor or other students:

Response One:

It is nice to see that you have pointed out the use of Word tables in business applications. As a person that has worked with the accounting department and software development team, I can tell you that tables are used quite extensively in both of these business sectors. In fact, the marketing, sales, and purchasing department also uses tables extensively to keep track of the various sponsors, distributors, and vendors that they are in contract with. Although, I do want to make mention that almost all of them use Excel and not Word tables because it enables the ability to perform calculations, conditional formatting, and functions. Data visualization using charts and graphs is also more easily done in Excel than in Word tables because of the dynamic nature of its cell variables. But regardless, Word tables still have many use cases, and the one that I have mentioned in my own response was the ability to create fillable forms in a table format and then convert them into PDF documents.

Response Two:

I really enjoy your mention of accounting functions and presenting information in table formatting. In my past work functions, I had to use tables extensively to keep everyone on track of projects and deadlines. I was able to achieve this using Excel, which is basically another form of table that enables more functionality in addition to a Word table. Quite frankly speaking, I was able to make my own academic scheduler and planner using Excel, which most definitely made it easier to navigate and easier to understand. But most importantly, I was to visualize my academic progress and my achievements. All of which help to motivate me to move forward.