Fix table size in Word?

truescot

Hi wonder if anyone can help (or even if its possible!)?

I have a table which I have developed in Microsoft Word for a project at work. It has 3 columns and 4 rows which fill one side of an A4. I want to send it to colleagues to personalise for their particular projects. I don't want the SIZE of the table to change, but the height of the individual rows may change depending on what they populate them with. I know how to set the size of each row, but its the size of the whole table i want to set, as the height of each row within that may change.

can i do this?

agrinnall

Are you saying that you want the cumulative total of the row heights to remain the same even if one of the rows has it's own height changed? For example:

Starting point 4 rows of 2 cm height (total table height 8cm)
Change row 1 to 3 cm, the other 3 rows change to 1.67 cm (total still 8cm)

If that's what you mean then I'm not sure how you would get around the issue of say 3 rows being changed to 2.67 cm meaning the fourth row would have zero height.

peachyprice

The table will get longer the more lines of text they populate the cells with beyond the size of the cells you have already set, you can't avoid that.

You could ask them to change the size of the font in the cells they might need to type more in, that would mean their text takes up less room.

grumpycrab

Put your 3x4 table inside a fixed size 1x1 table (with border hidden). Of-course, if there's too much text it will disappear.

Le_Kirk

Quart into pint pot springs to mind! You could try setting the individual cells to "Fit Text" but that will change your font size and prevent additional line feeds.

tyllwyd

How often are they going to have to re-enter the information? I'm wondering if it is worth trying to fix the size automatically - if this is a one-off, or if the information isn't likely to change dramatically in the future, I would just send the table out as it is, let them fill it in, then re-format it myself when they return the file.