Adjusting Cell Width In A Table Without Affecting Other Cells

[Meow]

Hello,

I’m using LibreOffice Writer, and I have 8 cells in a table as shown in the picture. I want to increase the width of the second cell from left (without affecting the width of any other cell) so that the last cell ends at the page margin.

How do I achieve this?

[dajare]

This was a useful question - I’ve often wondered the same thing. A bit of websearching brought a solution:

1. Put you cursor in column 2 (that’s second from left).
2. EITHER right-click and choose Table..., OR from the menu choose Table > Table Properties....
3. Those both bring up a “Table Format” dialog - choose the Columns tab.
4. Put a [✓] in the “Adapt table width” box, and add the value of the “Remaining space” box to the width of column 2. So, in my example below, column 2 would need to be 4.2 cm to fill out the page width:

Click “OK”, and you should have the result you want. Works for me! (LibO Version: 4.2.5.2).

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_{HT: Solved: Change single column width on only one row in table}

[Meow]

Thanks a lot, David! I was trying to do this for about an hour without any success. I appreciate your help.

The reason I wanted to do this is that I’ve manually set the widths of the blank cells and the I’ve used “Optimal Width” for cells which have text in them. Only the width of the second cell can be variable.

Anyway, is there any way to move a column to the right with the mouse so that it “pushes” all of the cells on its right while keeping their widths constant? Seems like a useful feature.

[dajare]

@Meow - glad it helped. As for this: “is there any way to move a column to the right with the mouse so that it “pushes” all of the cells on its right…?”, I’m really not sure. SHIFT+DRAG and CTRL+DRAG both do something different than plain DRAG, but I’m not sure what, and neither affect the original overall width of the table (the “push”, if dragging towards right). Perhaps someone else will know.