Make html table columns wider / prevent words from

I'm creating an html document with R markdown which has some tables. In situations where one column of a table has character values, how can I ensure the column is wide enough to contain the entire character string without wrapping? I tried using kableExtra below, but it seems like the width argument of column_spec is not being used even though the bold argument is.

library(data.table)
csd <- fread('  Oct-17  Sep-17  Aug-17  Jul-17  Jun-17  May-17  Apr-17  Mar-17  Feb-17  Jan-17  Dec-16  Nov-16  Oct-16  Sep-16  2017 YTD    2016 YTD    2015 YTD
V1                                                                  
V2      71,687  74,492  72,772  74,785  77,084  72,819  85,367  77,403  85,131  81,585  80,186  89,810  92,871  691,540 1,141,589   1,207,433
V3      22,788  22,355  23,093  23,239  23,821  23,005  25,883  22,168  24,812  23,715  22,708  28,128  29,366  211,164 353,006 411,659
V4  #DIV/0! 31.8%   30.0%   31.7%   31.1%   30.9%   31.6%   30.3%   28.6%   29.1%   29.1%   28.3%   31.3%   31.6%   30.5%   30.9%   34.1%
Some long variable name     30,047  31,910  30,046  31,766  33,455  30,913  37,524  33,683  37,589  36,571  35,590  44,447  44,295  296,933 516,597 528,305
V5      2.89%   1.83%   1.55%   1.97%   2.85%   1.37%   4.95%   5.54%   3.45%   3.12%   1.92%   2.65%   1.69%   3.01%   2.04%   0.61%
V6      867 583 465 626 952 422 1,857   1,866   1,298   1,140   682 1,179   748 8,936   10,539  3,201
V7      29,180  31,327  29,581  31,140  32,503  30,491  35,667  31,817  36,291  35,431  34,908  43,268  43,547  287,997 506,058 525,104
V8      0:23    0:15    0:10    0:20    0:29    0:14    0:53    1:03    0:33    0:24    0:20    0:25    0:17    0:29    0:21    0:06
V9      4:53    4:44    4:46    5:00    5:01    5:05    5:01    5:05    5:01    4:57    5:01    4:49    4:52    4:57    4:47    4:11
V10     86% 91% 94% 89% 83% 91% 78% 72% 81% 86% 89% 85% 92% 85% 89% 94%
V11     99.05%  98.20%  96.40%  97.25%  97.80%  96.50%  95.55%  95.85%  95.65%  96.25%  96.55%  97.75%  97.95%  96.92%  97.33%  98.23%
V12     99.75%  100.00% 99.90%  98.85%  99.00%  98.75%  99.00%  99.55%  99.85%  99.45%  99.20%  97.70%  97.55%  99.41%  98.50%  99.01%
')
csd <- csd[-1,-2]
names(csd)[1] <- 'V0'
words <- c('these','are','some','words','extreme','slightly')

csd[,1] <- replicate(nrow(csd), paste(sample(words, 7, T), collapse = " "))


library(knitr)
library(magrittr)
library(kableExtra)

csd %>% 
          kable('html', digits = 2) %>%
          column_spec(1, bold = T, width = "2600em") %>% 
          kable_styling(bootstrap_options = c("striped", "hover"))

I think it's more like an HTML/css issue. When the width of an HTML table exceed the page width, it will try to reduce column width if not necessary. If you reduce the number of columns for csd, you will see the width option starts to show an effect.

In this case, one way to work around is to use the scroll_box function and give the table a wider plotting area.

csd %>% 
  kable('html', digits = 2) %>%
  column_spec(1, bold = T, width = "2600em") %>% 
  kable_styling(bootstrap_options = c("striped", "hover")) %>%
  scroll_box(width = "2000px")

Update

Another hacky but "real" solution is to force the cell display as an inline-block

csd %>% 
  kable('html', digits = 2) %>%
  column_spec(1, bold = T, width = "2600em; display: inline-block;") %>% 
  kable_styling(bootstrap_options = c("striped", "hover"))

Update

~~The display: inline-block thing is now included by default in kableExtra (dev ver).~~

If we have display: inline-block; by default, the header row of the table columns lost the ability to adjust its width automatically. It breaks column_spec when the table is small and tight. As a result, I'm removing this line from default. If you need to forcefully set the width. you can always use the method I provided above.