How to tell Outlook not to auto resize the columns of a table

Question

I'm having a very frustrating experience with MS-Outlook, while creating a table inside an e-mail:

I have some text, separated by pipe characters, and I've chosen the "Convert text to table" feature to turn that text into a table. MS-Outlook does that indeed, but I don't like the size of the columns, so I would like to modify those.
I already tried resizing the columns, using the mouse, but that won't work, because MS-Outlook refuses to actually do so.
I also tried using the table properties, altering the preferred width of my table AND of columns, and whatever I modify, MS-Outlook does not care and changes it right back.
Uncheck the checkboxes also does nothing, as MS-Outlook just checks them back.
I have modified the message format standard from HTML into Rich Text but this does not make a difference.
Searching on Google came up with the following quote:

I find this the single most frustrating feature of Table Properties, and I'm not sure what I tell you will be correct, but here's what eventually works for me (sort of):

Disable auto resizing (Options... on the Table tab). ...

... but there's a problem: my "Options" page does not have any "Table" tab, as you can see:

... and even if there were, I heavily doubt it would make any difference, because the "Convert text into table" forces me to perform auto resizing, as can be seen from this dialog box:

(There's no "None" possibility)

I'm out of options. It's my intention to use my mouse to resize the columns of my "text-to-table-converted" table.

How can I achieve that?

Christy · Answer 1 · 2023-01-27T07:32:35.727

1

Update:

According to your description, i notice that you want to change the column width more easily. Then you can simply place your mouse over any horizontal line of the table and drag to adjust.

As i know, the number next to "Fixed column width" can be modified (The range is between 0.17 and 7.3). By modifying this number, we can adjust the width of the column.

edited Jan 27 '23 at 07:32

answered Jan 27 '23 at 07:06

Christy

2,481

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 01 '24 at 12:37

I have suffered with this for literally years, as I work with logged events in csv format (may contain dates, strings, integers). I sometimes need to communicate these by email, and Outlook (word editor) always auto sizes the column, making it unreadable across the page. The options given simply do not appear to work (AutoFit Contents, AutoFit Window, Fixed Column Width). Changing Table Properties > Cell > Options does not work. Really annoying that turning off Wrap Text allows you to resize manually, then after a few seconds ....booom, it returns to an awful auto size. NB the only workaround I have found is to insert spaces to break the 'long string' up, but it is too time consuming and frustrating, so I often don't bother. Wish MS would sort this out, but I have given up hope ... roll on retirement (unfortunately, not on the horizon) ...

Chrizk · Answer 3 · 2024-07-26T09:52:11.150

I do not agree with the comment in the previous 'answer', as it is valid to say there is no direct answer to the question (due to Microsoft behaviour), and I also provided a workaround, despite my belief that it is too cumbersome to actually implement.

However, bearing in mind that I have concluded that wordwrap does not take into account non-alphanumeric characters within a cell (which it should), I had an epiphany. I considered what would happen if I add an additional character. Better still, a character that is not displayed.

This method only works for DISPLAY PURPOSES, eg to send in an email so the recipient can visually appreciate what you communicating. As such, I believe this method directly answers the OP question. Noting, it inserts (a) character, so it may corrupt the content if used elsewhere. Also, the character is shown if Show/Hide enabled.

(You could 'cleanse' the character by pasting the content into Notepad which does not support Unicode)

Change Table Properties > (Table Tab) Options > Uncheck Automatically resize to fit contents Highlight the cell or column contents that are perceived to be blocking the resize of the column. OP mentions "some text, separated by pipe characters", generally in my case, Comma Seperated Variable/CSV. Use the Word editor Find and Replace function

Find What : Separator character

Replace With : Separator character immediately followed by 200B, then pressing Alt-x

Replace All