Once the table has been created, users can easily insert/delete rows and columns by blocking a row or column, and clicking on the mouse button to bring up a pull down menu.
For quick construction of formatted tables, WP has an AutoFormat button, and MS Word has a Wizard option. These options allow the user to create a table from a number of predefined styles. WP has a greater number of styles compared to MS Word. However MS Word also has an Expert button which can help users build a customized table. The Expert option provides the user with some pre-programmed features, such as predefined headings (eg. days of the week). MS Word also allows the user to program special formats for table headings.
WP and MS Word also give some common utilities that the user may need. For example, there is a function in both packages to sum a column of table cells, and this function can be assigned to a cell. However, WP has a greater number of predefined functions, which are catagorized into a number of different types. Function assignment is somewhat more difficult to perform in WP, as the user must navigate through a Function Bar even to assign a simple function to a cell.
One other difference between MS Word and WP is that the default table (unless the user changes the default) created in MS Word does not have explicit gridlines. For the default table, the document shows "faded" gridlines, so the user can see the cell differentiation but these lines are not created when the document is printed. To print the gridlines, a user must change the style of the table, or alternately, can block the table and select the Borders option, to specify the style of the table borders.