By default, there is no styling in Word to mark even and odd rows. This increases the readability of tables in Word for your viewers. It means one row will be in a certain colour, the following will be in another, and so on.

Luckily, Word allows you to have alternate rows in tables by following just a couple of steps.

Firsts, select the complete table you want to add the styling to.

Then go to ‘Design’, click on ‘More’ under Table Styles and select ‘New Table Style…’.

A new window will open ‘Create New Styling from Formatting’.

In this new window, you perform the following actions:

• Add a name for your new style. I call this Odd Even, but choose whatever naming you like.
• Under ‘Apply formatting to’, select ‘Even banded rows’.
• Then, select a colour which you think is nice.

Now click on OK.

You now have created a new style for tables. It is time to apply the newly created style to your particular table in order to see the styling live.

So select your table and click on the new style. You now have a table with odd and even rows with distinct colours!

Optionally, you can add a different header row colour to identify the header row more easily. Follow the same process to do so.