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
    2016-11-08T15:37:31+00:00

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

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-11-08T15:23:34+00:00

    I have no problem dragging column borders here. Can you change the widths in the Table Properties dialog box?

    please see my post from today in order to replicate this issue...

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-25T14:48:18+00:00

    What I did (randomly) and worked is to try to grip the column border from the bottom. I mean if the row width is high, then gripping the vertical column boundary from its bottom in the same row, seems to allow resizing.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-05-26T22:26:22+00:00

    I also had some text with no spaces in it, 100s of characters long, so Word 2013 automatically stretches the column width to the maximum width, and wouldn't let me shrink it at all, even after trying every suggestion in this thread (apart from the zero-length spaces, this wouldn't work as the text cannot be changed at all).  Not to mention with two of these columns next to each other, the table stretches off the right side so it can't even be seen in Draft or Web Layout views.

    But I fixed it!  Want to know how?  Luckily I still have Word 2007 installed as well, so all I had to do is open it up in Word 2007, resize it to ANY size I want, and then I can open and view it in Word 2013 fine.

    Serious bug Microsoft!  Shame on you for not fixing it.

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  5. Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-03-07T00:32:50+00:00

    That is very strange. Can you reproduce this in any document set up with "Different odd and even" headers/footers and mirror margins?

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