The "Column width and alignment" feature of org-mode (
http://orgmode.org/manual/Column-width-and-alignment.html) is not working in the latest GIT version (as of Fri Dec 8 20:06:59 BRST 2017).
I have just tested it in the table
|---+------------------------------|
| | <6> |
| 1 | one |
| 2 | two |
| 3 | This is a long chunk of text |
| 4 | four |
|---+------------------------------|
which is actually the example given in the manual. It fails under the latest version (column width is unchanged upon alignment)
I am assuming you are using the master/development version of Org from git? If so, see this in ORG-NEWS:
*** =align= STARTUP value no longer narrow table columns
Columns narrowing (or shrinking) is now dynamic. See [[*Dynamically
narrow table columns]] for details. In particular, it is decoupled from
aligning.
If you need to automatically shrink columns upon opening an Org
document, use =shrink= value instead, or in addition to align:
#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
,#+STARTUP: align shrink
#+END_EXAMPLE
but it works OK in an older version (Org version 7.9.3f - GNU Emacs 24.3).
Wow! That's a very old version!