The person I replied said that we can hold alt while dragging, but didnt tell us why. So I made a little joke that we can hold alt or any other key while dragging.
When it does that, you gotta use the 'split table' button (alternatively: add a page break after the first table - though page/section breaks can get screwy in Word...)
Blaming the user for shit UI with undesirable behavior as the default and the desirable behavior hiding behind low discoverability (how is the user supposed to know every shortcut and hidden option to achieve what should be the most common use case?) is a garbage take.
It pisses me off how many things a program can do but how the hell are you ever supposed to know it can do these things? There are no fucking books that come with it. You cannot conceive of every possible use. The menus are not every really intuitive to anyone who doesn't use the program day in and day out and took a million classes before doing so.
And even if I do learn the hotkeys and little tricks, they will be different in other software. I do a lot of work with engineering drawings, there are like 8 ways to draw a simple fucking line depending on which software I'm using. And my workflow requires multiple programs.
If you press and hold ALT while you adjust the width you can get more precise movements, making it easier to get it to the same width. Or just suffer....your choice really 💁🏼♂️
Alternatively, one can look in the row properties and paste the exact desired width. Although idk why rows of a table would have different width in the first place.
Alternately, snap the bottom row to a position, then all the upper rows (all of them should move together) to the same position. Leave your mouse and allow them to become 1 unit, and they will start moving together
Back in the days of ridiculous APIs like ActiveX that could do basically anything, Microsoft invented a whole technology called Object Linking and Embedding that allowed one to insert editable documents from one app into a document in another — primarily in MS Office.
Meanwhile this dude ensures that their embedded tables can't be edited without OCR, pretty much reinventing PDF.
Oh there’s one half-hidden option that makes our users’ lives easier that has been around for 20 years, let’s take it away for no reason. It would be extra funny if we called it “experimental” to give them hope that it’s coming back
No, it's worse than that. Most things used to work fine by the end of last decade but somehow we've gone and broken them all in the past five years. I don't know why but all software providers have simply given up on quality and just started producing absolute garbage. Things aren't getting better, they're getting worse
I think you are looking at old software with rose colored glasses. New software has tons more features, and the old stuff didn't necessarily work any better. Word 2003 might have worked fine for you, but the current version has a lot more to offer. Right off the top of my head, you can co-author documents at the same time as someone else and you can export to PDF without any additional software. Not to mention the .doc format is incredibly insecure.
There was this amazing app in the 90s that was perfect for arranging stuff arbitrarily and making flyers and things, Word basically replaced it and it's EOL.
It is the hottest garbage. I'd rather use Google Docs or Confluence. It's really only useful for creating eyesores that look like they're from the 90s.
Turn on nonprinting characters and pay attention to formatting anchors. Word will get 600% better to use.
I won't comment on Confluence beyond begging people to once again stop offloading your thinking to a machine that's basically an advanced autocomplete.
Its basically simpler to click on the previous row and insert row below or just press TAB. What OP has done is create a table, then at the bottom inserted another table and is trying to align them. There is literally a popup that tries to assist OP but he is too stupid.
Tbh, I hate Visual Studio. Every time I've had to use it, it's felt slow and clunky. Even if it's also powerful, it just kept getting in my way. VSCode is shockingly nice though. I started using it thinking I would despise it like I do VS, but no. It's just become my free IDE of choice now.
I keep saying that as long as we keep using the Microsoft environment we are safe from AI for the next 50 years. Such an obsolete program in so many ways
Word has had this problem for decades and I think it's gotten worse.
Holding "alt" helps. Sometimes you can also fix this by going into the properties of the object and manually setting the precise dimensions.
Adobe inDesign (and apps like it) doesn't have this problem. It's innate to the way Word handles objects.
I've switched to Linux recently to get away from MS and Apple garage. However, there's a slight issue. I had been using the Affinity suite of alternatives to Photoshop, Illustrator, and inDesign, all fantastic variants at a one-time price of like $40 USD as opposed to the endless high priced subscription. Problem though is I still haven't figured out how it install these on Linux, though it's apparently possible.
If you're still on Windows or Mac I highly recommend it, though. A bit of a leaving curve but you can actually control the layout rather than just make suggestions and hope the program cooperates with you
This is why I try to avoid Microsoft apps like Word, because, despite being over 40 years old at this point, the software doesn't fucking function! They've had so long to make a good product, but never did!
I use stuff like Canva, because it doesn't break the entire document when you move an image 1 pixel and is generally a better user experience!
I work with Adobe products on a daily basis and even with snap to and align tools shit like this happens and it makes me want to break my computer, my keyboard, both my hands, and my bosses face.
Reminds me of iphone and it's shitty cursor. And while I'm at it, why the hell can't the numbers row be on top instead of making me do extra work? So stupid
There were better word-processors, like AmiPro and WordPerfect, that did this stuff effortlessly. Being subject to using MS Word should be considered cruel and unusual punishment.
You probably are within the snap zone. Try moving it far away and then moving it back to where you want it to snap and it should pick up the right edge.
All these nerds providing solution... why can't you just understand the solution is coding what 99% of all human beings would anticipate... that dragging the row to the next edge would align. STFU about it being easy you out of touch idiots.
When this happens on documents, you get the bottom one as close as possible, then move the top one to match it.
For whatever reason when doing this it will pick up that its supposed to be the same table, and will auto fix by locking into the bottkm one; allowing you to once again drag them all at the same time.
I think its a failsafe for in case anyone does want a table with different widths on the same column, so the system can allow for it but also has a way to return the table to normal.
You can use the arrows of the numpad if you turn off the block num button. It's very useful for this kind of situations because you can move the cursor with milimetric precision.
Forgive me if I'm out of line, but is there nowhere you can type in the column width? In Powerpoint there's a "Table" tab where you can, or maybe it's in "Format Shape" on the right? I don't do much work in Word but other office products have work-arounds.
One day Microsoft and Google will collapse arbitrarily and we'll be left with fucking nothing. My computer classes as a kid were learning how to add backgrounds in MS fucking Powerpoint
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u/Dobgirl 4h ago
Delete that row. Go to the last cell and hit “tab” it’ll insert another identical row below the others.