How to disable self-adjusting tables?

[Gringotavy]

Hi.
I frequently use tables in Word (2003) to create forms and to format
documents for printing. One problem I continually face is that Word
insists in resizing the tables to fit the contents. This despite going
to Tables / table properties / options and deselecting "Automatically
adjust size to contets". Even after having done this, Word still
refuses to let me manually adjust the size of the cells and columns. If
I double click on a column border, the column inmediately shrinks (or
expands) to fit the content, and no amount of clicking will persuade it
to do otherwise. Ctrl. Z undoes the action, of course, but we're back
on square one. Sometimes by sheer bludgeoning the damned thing it lets
me resize manually, but usually I give up and go through the Table
properties Column menu, which is highly irritating, as I have to hit
and miss a bunch of times till I get the width right.
Is this a bug in Word? Or can Redmond just not imagine someone
prefering to manually risize the benighted columns?
Help appreciated.
Ian

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi Gringotavy,

Double-clicking or just clicking certainly won't get the result you
want; you do need to drag. FWIW, I generally have more luck dragging the
column indicators in the ruler...

I frequently use tables in Word (2003) to create forms and to format
documents for printing. One problem I continually face is that Word
insists in resizing the tables to fit the contents. This despite going
to Tables / table properties / options and deselecting "Automatically
adjust size to contets". Even after having done this, Word still
refuses to let me manually adjust the size of the cells and columns. If
I double click on a column border, the column inmediately shrinks (or
expands) to fit the content, and no amount of clicking will persuade it
to do otherwise. Ctrl. Z undoes the action, of course, but we're back
on square one. Sometimes by sheer bludgeoning the damned thing it lets
me resize manually, but usually I give up and go through the Table
properties Column menu, which is highly irritating, as I have to hit
and miss a bunch of times till I get the width right.
Is this a bug in Word? Or can Redmond just not imagine someone
prefering to manually risize the benighted columns?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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