Word (Table) advice please

I've always had problems resizing columns in Tables that I've inserted in Word.

Here's a case in point: I opened a new doc (Word 2003), set it to Landscape, then went Table > Insert Table. I selected 5x columns and 20x rows (font at size 11) then dotted Autofit to Window and hit OK.

This gives me an empty table that fills the width of my landscaped A4 page, and it has 5 equally spaced columns. Next I begin naming columns and inserting data. During the process it becomes obvious that some columns need to be a different size to others, so I assess a few rows of typical data to get an idea of what size each column SHOULD be. Then, beginning at the left-hand or first column, I drag its right-hand border to suit the enclosed data.

(Actually, I discovered a handy tip while doing this: If there's data in a column row, double-clicking the right border seems to make the column's width adjust to suit the text. But not for all columns, durnit )

OK, so far, so good and I manage to resize columns 1,2,3 and 4. But all the while the size of the 5th column has been shrinking, so that the table no longer fills the page at right. The right-hand border of column 5 is now some distance away from the right side of the page.

And when I try to drag THAT border back to where it started, ie, just a margin's width away from the page edge, it won't go.

Seems to me that there must be some simple way of changing the original table parameters to one with fixed widths for each column?

Advice would be appreciated

 

I'm afraid I do not repro the behavior you report.

When I drag the far right border back to the full width, it stays put.

I do have a couple of questions/suggestions:
1. Why select AutoFit Window? Why not Fixed column width or AutoFit to contents? AutoFit to window seems problematic based on the width of the window and not necessarily relevant to the document of its contents.

2. I realize word provides "table" functionality, but I find it much better to perform this functionality in Excel and then Paste the info from Excel into Word. There are many more formatting options in Excel and you have the ability to even Paste Link into the Word document.

 

Thanks Bilbo. I'm sure you're correct about Excel, but I've always had trouble using that app and I think it's a little too late for me to start getting into its engineroom.

I'll experiment with your Word table suggestions, though.

Re my original problem, it's possible that it's somehow unique to my PC and its Word settings. However, I did find a solution:

Press and hold Alt, then click the border at right and drag it toward the margin. Then release the mouse, then release the Alt key. BTW - This method also reveals the actual sizes of ALL the columns, shown above with a RULER-type display.

Cheers