34

[The question is somewhat obsolete; the new behavior does something reasonable on a paste when you've copied an entire row. As far as I can tell, there's still no way to move a row directly. The workflow now is copy a row, insert a new blank row where you want one, paste (the paste now inserts the row correctly), and delete the original row.]

How do you move rows in a Document table? The obvious thing - selecting the entire row, cut, paste - does something very strange (inserts the row as a single cell with a nested table containing the cut row).

Improve this question

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
12

You can:

  1. Insert a new table row at the new location for the existing row. To do so, place the mouse pointer on the row where you want to place the new one, then press the left mouse button to open the context menu and choose either "Insert row above" or "Insert row below".
  2. Right-click and drag to select all the contents on the old row, then cut the selected contents (CTRL+X); the old row will remain there but it will be empty.
  3. Right-click on the first cell of the new row to select it, then paste the contents cut before (CTRL+V).
  4. Delete the old row. To do so, place the mouse pointer on the old row, then press the left mouse button to open the context menu and choose "Delete row".

This is obviously not a great solution, but it might be better than recreating the entire table from scratch?

Improve this answer
1
  • 14
    Currently you can cut and paste entire rows without problem. You still have to manually insert a blank row prior to pasting. This is idiotic for a mature product.
    – glenviewjeff
    Commented Jun 18, 2014 at 14:49
4

You can copy table to google spreadsheets, move row there and then select it and click on "Web Clipboard" button (fourth from the left between paint and redo), copy. And then via this button put it back to you google document. Also not very great, but saves time.

Improve this answer
1
  • 2
    This method loose the text formatting.
    – Juh_
    Commented Jun 26, 2013 at 11:59
3

The short answer is you can't. You will have to recreate the table manually.

You used to be able to manually edit the table in your Google Doc using HTML view but this functionality has been removed.

Improve this answer
0

If you want to move many columns (probably not worth it for one or two)

  1. add a new column
  2. in that new column add a numeric value relating to what order I want it to be in (add 0 for the header row)
  3. right click column -> sort table -> sort ascending
  4. delete numeric column (or hide the column for next time)
Improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.