Cannot resize table columns in word 2013

Worthless to say, Office 2016 is still buggy but I found by chance a possible workaround in a different thread related to text columns  but that is good also for tables columns. I report it as is:

The only thing I found that will work is Suzanne's tip above on January 13, 2014:

"If you uncheck “Update document content while dragging” on the General tab of Word Options, it will work as expected. You lose the live layout functionality, so it’s not a very satisfactory alternative, but, until this is fixed, perhaps it will help."

I confirm that in my case it works. I can also now re-check the flag, and, after that, the problem has magically gone!

I add some more information, in the case that some good-willing Microsoft guy could be interested to fix the bug in the next decades:

• my document has many long tables generated by converting text into table on another PC using Word 2013;
• if I create a new table, it works correctly;

Hope can help.

Not sure if found an answer to this but I was having the same issue.  I turned on reveal codes (Show Paragraph Marks) and found that I had some text inside a cell that had converted to a table inside a cell.  Once I removed that I could then size the rows.  This document and table have been around since Office 2000 and was working fine in 2013 until a few weeks ago.  I found some other formatting issues that flared up in another document about that time. So I either made an unknowing change in my settings or a patch came out.

Dear Buzz, it drove me nuts for an afternoon. I have no idea what is going on with tables in word 2013.

If you right click on the table and select "distribute columns evenly"

this will do something to make the table such that you can then drag things and have them stay where you drag them. 

Strangely, I could not get any new tables to misbehave after I did that. it was extremely odd and frustrating to not be able to drag and resize the table columns.

I'm having this issue too.  I have a 2 column table.  I can resize the width of the left column down to 1.87" by dragging with my mouse but it will not go narrower than that.  I went to Table Properties and manually changed it to 1.5", but it bounced back to 1.87".  I then unclicked Preferred Width in Table Properties and tried again, but no dice.  I have no long words or strings that are blocking this.  It's just not working.   What's the solution, Microsoft?????

Hi Doug, I had no idea what mouse mode or touch mode is, but I googled it and I don't think it has anything to do with my question / issue with tables.

I just started using office 2013 this week and I have to say, not at all impressed with this new version after having so much trouble with basic  tables functionality yesterday.

I had a table that was locked / frozen, could not be width adjusted in any way. It was ridiculous. 

I cannot recreate it now, all the new tables I have created are allowing me to resize them by dragging the column dividers. yesterday, my table was completed locked and i could not resize it at all in any way, and there was no setting that I saw that was causing this, it was just stuck.

I selected "distribute columns evenly" in desperation and then after that, everything seems to be working better. The not being able to wrap long urls in a cell is extremely frustrating as well.

I dont see any way to mark this as closed, so i guess i will pick the long url article from Stefan as a answer because it is part of the answer. no idea why the tabel was totally locked yesterday. it will remain a mystery until it happens again.