table width in MS Office problem

[kalos]

hello

in a table in MS Word 2003, how can i set the width of a specific column to be accordingly to the content (text inside), WHILE the total width of the table not to be affected?

because i select a column, i click to adjust width to the content, but then MS Office does so in the other columns as well, which results in an altered total table width

thanks

[steeladept]

Which product inside Office?  Excel? Word? PowerPoint?  I don't know if or how this can be done, but it would help others to know which product you are looking for help with.

[kalos]

MS Word

[Carol Haynes]

If I understand you you want a fixed width table with one column varying by content and the others automatically adjusting so that the overall width does not change - is that correct?

If so I don't think what you are asking for is possible - what you can do is specify all the column widths precisely (either as percentages or cm).

I can't really see how this could be possible - if you want one column to fit the content how would Word know how you want the other columns changed to fit?

By default Word seems to have two modes of operation - fit to content or fit to page width.

What you could do is insert a text box into the document and put your table inside that. In the table properties turn off the preferred width option under the columns tab. This makes all the columns variable width but the table will be restricted to the size of the text box - which can be resized at any time.

(I did all this in Word 2010 but I am pretty sure the table properties and text box properties haven't changed too much since earlier versions).