Cannot resize table columns in word 2013

Anonymous
2015-01-15T19:51:53+00:00

I have just recently started using MS Office 2013. In the past, it was EASY to create a table and then highlight a column and hover over the vertical line between columns, the mouse pointer would change to the nifty little arrow line arrow pointer, and then you could drag the column and change its width. it was easy, intuitive, simple, -- a total no-brainer.

Now in Word 2013, that no longer works. I cannot drag the column widths, and I cannot change the width at all for the columns in my table.

I have looked for settings in many places, but I cannot seem to get the table to allow me to drag and resize the columns in any way.

It is very annoying that such simple intuitive functionality from past versions does not work anymore in Office 2013, Word 2013.

Stefan's answer is only a partial answer. no idea why the tables were locked, but the long urls was a side issue related issue.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-01-06T02:55:20+00:00

    Thanks very much to those of you who posted about this recently and brought it to our attention. Thanks to you speaking up, our engineering team is now actively researching the issue and working on a fix for it. When I have more information, I or someone from the product team will post back to this thread to let you know.

    Best,

    -Erik, Office Newsroom

    Hi Erik,

    It's already 2017 but the problem still persist.. Is there any new info or solutions to this?

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-11-15T22:17:11+00:00

    Thanks very much to those of you who posted about this recently and brought it to our attention. Thanks to you speaking up, our engineering team is now actively researching the issue and working on a fix for it. When I have more information, I or someone from the product team will post back to this thread to let you know.

    Best,

    -Erik, Office Newsroom

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  3. Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-11-15T08:02:44+00:00

    This is the exact issue we are currently experiencing.  

    This issue occurs under the following conditions:

    • Office 2016
    • In page layout dialog....
      • Odd and Even pages checked.
      • Left and right margins set to different measurements from each other.
      • Multiple pages set to Normal.
    • In document View set to Print view.

    Table column resizing behaves correctly for tables on primary pages but not for tables on the even pages.  

    Sometimes the columns cannot be adjusted at all and at other times dragging a column results in the adjacent column resizing and not the one that was dragged.

    I have also noticed that the ruler does not display or behave correctly for the tables on the even pages.  It appears to skew off to one side as if it has a rather large indent/outdent added to it.

    If the left and right margins are set equal to each other or the multiple pages in the page layout dialog is set to 'Mirrored Margins' then the tables work as expected.

    Workarounds to allow table columns to be adjusted on the even pages include :

    • adding a temporary page break to force tables onto a primary page, adjust the columns then remove the page break.
    • unchecking the odd & even pages in page layout dialog, adjust the columns then recheck the odd & even setting.
    • switching the  view to a different mode, such as outline or normal, adjust the columns then changing the view back.

    This is far from ideal and most certainly not a fix to what  evidently appears to be a bug.  And is certainly not something we like to provide to our clients as a solution to the problem.

    How can this issue get raised as a bug with microsoft???

    In Word 2016, I can reproduce the steps you listed, and I have reported it to the Office team.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-11-10T12:00:17+00:00

    Matt, your description of the problem is thorough and accurate.

    I have been a big proponent of using Word tables over Excel worksheets when formatting tables for documents (i.e., no calculations). For years, I have gotten pretty good at making Word tables look the way I want. But this problem really confounded me.

    Clearly, the development team at MS needs to fix this. This is obviously a pretty big bug.

    Thanks for helping me get past this.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-11-08T15:37:31+00:00

    doug, please see my post from today in how to replicate this issue.

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