... This one comes all the way from Office 4.3 and still works in all versions of Word, although in my experience it's surprisingly little known. If you use tables a lot and find clicking+dragging and/or SHIFT+cursor keys to be an awkward way to select an entire table, with ALL of its necessary formatting but NO unwanted extraneous data, try simply placing the cursor anywhere within the table then pressing ALT+SHIFT+NUMPAD 5 (NOT the keyboard 5 - it won't work). Hey presto - entire table, with all its hidden formatting (even if you're not viewing it already) instantly highlighted!

Hope this is useful.

Cheers,
Nell Smith