Merlin,
That is not correct. You do not need to go into HTML mode for this.
As Teri said you can do this through CSS. You can set this by editing the
style for that table, which is completely doable in design view. Select the
table properties | Style | Format | Border, and then set the padding in CSS.
Note: this may not look right in all browsers as not all browsers render CSS
correctly or accurately. That's one of the reasons people still use the
default table cellpadding, or they simply add additional columns in the
proper spots to provide left/right padding.
Hope this helps,
Mark Fitzpatrick
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage