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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-01-27T10:30:20+00:00

    I found that unchecking that box AND removing all merged cells allowed me to resize columns, something that has been easy to do for what, 20 years?

    It simply stuns me that MS allowed this to ship. It's unbelievable.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-02-12T13:28:42+00:00

    I experience a similar problem in my version of word 2016 (word365)

    A new table cannot be dragged to the desired width, however I can still set the width to desired values by typing the numbers.

    Additionally I found that when I display paragraph and layout markers, I can actually drag the edges of the table to the desired position.

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  3. Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-02-13T22:57:14+00:00

    You can resize individual columns by dragging their borders, if that helps.

    If I remember correctly, dragging the bottom right corner of a table to resize all columns at once has been dropped (I don't remember which version was the last to support it).

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-02-25T19:26:19+00:00

    Stefan,

    Hello.  I've enjoyed a lot of your helpful hints in the past, but I believe that SDW6 is saying that he cannot drag the column to the desired width by clicking on the border.   He said "table", so that must have been the confusion.  I can't, either.  Has anyone found a workaround for this?  Thank you.

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  5. Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-02-25T23:29:00+00:00

    I have no problems dragging table borders on my system with Office 2013. I currently don't have Office 2016 installed anywhere, so I can't test that version.

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