Deleting columns from a table with merged cells

Question

I'm trying to delete columns from a table which has horizontally merged cells

Selection.MoveEnd Unit:=WdUnits.wdCell, Count:=3
Selection.Columns.Delete

Eventhough columns are getting deleted, merged cells are removed in the process leaving a broken table.

Almost similar approach to delete rows works fine as explained in this answer

Workaround

I'm doing something like this as work around

Selection.MoveEnd Unit:=WdUnits.wdCell, Count:=3
Selection.MoveDown Unit:=WdUnits.wdLine, Count:=2, Extend:=wdExtend
Selection.Cells.Delete

Then setting width of Cell at index 1,2 to rest of the table rows. This way you can avoid merged cell getting deleted.

Answer 1

Word tables are not always intuitive. If a cell spans a column that is to be deleted, then the ENTIRE spanned cell will always be deleted, as you have shown.

When I'm NOT using VBA, I always unmerge cells before deleting rows or columns; otherwise Word's behavior is hard to predict.

Using VBA I would suggest the following:

'splits the header row of the current table into 7 cells
Selection.tables(1).cell(1,2).split numrows:=1, numcolumns:=7

'your code to delete columns
Selection.MoveEnd Unit:=WdUnits.wdCell, Count:=3
Selection.Columns.Delete

'merge the header row back into one span
ActiveDocument.Range( _
    start:= Selection.tables(1).cell(1,2).range.start, _
    end :=  Selection.tables(1).cell(1,5).range.end _
    ).cells.Merge

or for a more general approach, to delete n columns:

width = Selection.tables(1).columns.count - 1
Selection.tables(1).cell(1,2).split numrows:=1, _
     numcolumns:= width - 1
Selection.MoveEnd Unit:=WdUnits.wdCell, Count:= n
Selection.Columns.Delete
ActiveDocument.Range( _
    start:= Selection.tables(1).cell(1,2).range.start, _
    end :=  Selection.tables(1).cell(1,width-n-1).range.end _
    ).cells.Merge