PowerPoint gives you a number of ways to quickly create tables.  You can:

• Insert the table using the placeholder
• Create a table with the grid
• Draw a table on the slide with the pencil
• Insert an Excel spreadsheet

The tutorial below goes through the steps in detail.

Click here to view the PowerPoint tutorial.

Here’s an outline of the basic steps:

• Click on the placeholder and choose the numbers of columns and rows.  You can always add or delete them later so don’t worry if it’s not exact.
• If you don’t have a placeholder to click on, select TABLE from the INSERT menu.

• Once you have a table on the slide, you can edit it using the table properties with the ribbon toolbar in PowerPoint 2007 or the tables and borders toolbar in previous versions.

If there’s data in the table that you want to manipulate, like adding cells together, then you’re best bet is to insert the table as an Excel spreadsheet.

To learn more about working with tables, check out some of the other tutorials.