Cannot resize table columns in word 2013

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?????

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.

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.

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.

I add a bit of information. On 4K screen it is often impossible to resize columns even after having disabled "Update document content while dragging".

The problem seems due in somewhat to the screen resolution. You could try to enlarge the zoom to better catch the sensitive point.... NO! You have to REDUCE the zoom and then magically you can resize as you want!