Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Adjusting Column Widths on Joined Tables.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 18, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021
You can easily join tables in Word by simply removing the paragraphs that originally separated the tables. However, this may present a problem if the tables had different numbers of columns or if the column widths in each table were different. There are many different ways you can approach this problem, most of which involve some sort of repetitious activity that can get very tiring if you have many columns in the table.
One quick solution to this problem is to allow Word to do the formatting for the columns. To do this, you follow these steps:
At this point you can make any additional changes you want to the widths of the columns.
The problem with the methods discussed so far is that you still may not end up with the column widths you want. After all, you are leaving the widths up to Word, and that may not produce the best results for your needs. More often, you may want the joined tables to assume the column widths already set in the first table. In this case, the following method will work great. Just make sure you do these steps before you join the two tables:
If you followed these steps precisely, Word will have pasted the information at the end of the table, inserting rows as necessary. In addition, the columns are the same width as the other columns in the first table. You can then delete the second table since it is no longer needed.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9924) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Adjusting Column Widths on Joined Tables.
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2022-06-19 05:20:22
Thierry Hoornaert
While I was working for a client, they mentioned a document with a complex table that, once converted to pdf for archiving, had the last column(s) altered. Curiously, exporting/printing the file to pdf went fine. I'm sure they used another conversion tool for archiving, but I couldn't get to that information, nor make them change that.
It might be interesting to add that the document was assembled by VBA, calling bookmarked text blocks, which in view of the current tip topic (Adjusting Column Widths on Joined Tables), can be a challenge. The library with the bookmarked text (and tables) had one set of margins for all bookmarks.
On top of that, rows had to be dynamically numbered, but that is another topic.
The document had 4 columns in general, but columns had different widths on some rows, and some rows had an extra column, while elsewhere some cells were, I'm sure, merged. Setting fixed column widths didn't help. I made sure the page layout was correct (A4 is used here) as Letter conversion to A4 can mess things up.
I concluded that the table was not consistently built with the end result in mind.
Looking at the layout, I saw that I should create a table with (e.g.) 6 columns, making sure all cells would start and finish according to one of these set columns. I then merged cells to get to the final looks. To make sure that the overall look would not be altered by any pdf conversion, I kept at least 1 row with 6 visible columns, while getting rid of the borders between the columns: it looked like a blank line, something the layout could afford.
For what I know, it is working fine since then.
Would you do the same? Is there another way to get there?
Best regards,
Thierry Hoornaert
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