Unfortunatly that code takes away the purpose of assigning columns a width so that the cells in the columns below have the same width  I know following your code I could just add  colspan width  to each cell but that would be cumbersome  Basically Id like it to be like this  border  width   width  a  width  b  width  c    border  width  width  d  width  e  width  f   g  h  i   k  l  m    And as you can see in the code   border  width   width  a  width  b  width  c    border  width  width  d  width  e  width  f   g  h  i   k  l  m    g h i k l m dont need to be assigned any width or anything they just take on the width of the leading row d e f  Now using your code I would get  border width    colspan width  a  colspan width  b  colspan width  c    colspan width  d  colspan width  e  colspan width  f   g  h  i   k  l  m   Of course I could add the colpan width to each cell to get  border width    colspan width  a  colspan width  b  colspan width  c    colspan width  d  colspan width  e  colspan width  f   colspan width  g  colspan width  h  colspan width  i   colspan width  k  colspan width  l  colspan width  m   Which is the appearance I want But I dont want to have to add the colpan width to each cell once I already have a leading row that has that  Sorry if I appear to be extremely picky