MS Word tables: how to automatically shift cells to the right and down after insertion of new cell in upper left?

Question

What I have is a table in Word, R x C cells, filled with chronological data. Periodically, a new entry must be added in the upper left cell and all other cells must be shifted to the right and down. This could result in a new row being added add the bottom of the table. The number of columns C must remain unchanged.

To do this manually is tedious, it takes a lot of time. Word offers Cell Insertion functionality, but this only shifts cells to the right (creating a new column) or down (creating a new row for just one column). Both are insufficient for me.

What I also tried: start with a table with just one column and lots of rows and then converting it to a table with size R x C, with Word automatically redistributing the cell contents over the whole table. I have not been able to find this function.

I would like to think that I am not the only one in need of such functionality, but my Googling hasn't given me any solutions yet.

Answer 1

While explaining this challenge to a colleague, I got another idea and it works!

I will maintain a simple list of chronologically sorted items in a Word document, each item on its own line. I then use the function to convert selected text to a table. You can find this as an option in the table section.

Word asks how many rows and columns you want to have and then distributes the items from left to right, from top to bottom, just as I want them: the newest item in the upper left hand cell, the slightly older item to its right and so on to the oldest item in the bottom right cell.

Next time I need to add a newer item, I just add it to the top of the list of items and convert the entire list to a table again. Very fast, very simple (if I say so myself).