Expand an org-table with clipped fields?

Question

I learned that I can edit the whole clipped field in a new window with org-table-edit-field, but it's kind of annoying to open a new window each time I want to edit each field. How can I edit those clipped fields by expanding them temporarily instead?

e.g. expand this:

|<3>|<3>|
|a=>|c=>|

to get this:

|<3>|<3>|
|abra|cadabra|

Answer 1

You can save the below to you config, evaluate it and run C-u M-x org-table-align with the point in the table. That will re-align the table without narrowing.

(defun my/org-table-align-maybe-narrow (orig-fun &rest args)
  "Align org-table, but do not do narrowing if prefix argument
\\[universal-argument] is used before ORIG-FUN."
  (let ((org-table-do-narrow (null current-prefix-arg)))
    (apply orig-fun args)))
(advice-add 'org-table-align :around #'my/org-table-align-maybe-narrow)

---

Here is the example table from your question:

| <3> | <3> |
| abra | cadabra |

With the point on the table, if you do M-x org-table-align, you will get the below (as expected):

| <3> | <3> |
| a=> | c=> |

Now, with the above elisp snippet evaluated, if you do C-u M-x org-table-align, you will get:

| <3>  | <3>     |
| abra | cadabra |

And doing M-x org-table-align again will give:

| <3> | <3> |
| a=> | c=> |

---

If you need to do this narrowing switching very frequently, you might want to have org-table-align bound to some key. Below is an example:

(define-key org-mode-map (kbd "C-c C-|") #'org-table-align)