How to Prevent Automatic Table Formatting in Word Documents

Microsoft Word at times automatically changes the column width of a table at its own discretion. This jumbles up the entire page layout. You can always prevent automatic table formatting in Word documents. The procedure to do so is as follows..

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  Right-click any one cell of the table in the document and select the ‘Table Properties’ context command.
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  Go to the ‘Options’ button in the ‘Table’ tab  and remove the check mark in front of the option ‘Automatically resize to fit contents’ in the next dialog box, i.e., ‘Table Options’.

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  Then close all opened dialogs with ‘OK’.

After this, Word will not adjust the column width of this table on its own.

Note: The changed option works for the current table only. If required, you will have to configure the setting for every table separately.