Column width and alignment

It is very difficult to help with this type of problem without being able to view the site. If you post a link to your site where the problem can be seen, someone may be able to help you.

Try this to add horizontal padding to your table cells:

.tablepress thead th, .tablepress tfoot th, .tablepress tbody td {
    padding: 2px 15px;
}

The first size (2px) affects the top and bottom padding. The second (15px) affects the left and right padding. You can actually specify all four widths separately by giving 4 values in the order (top right bottom left).

You can put the default CSS for all cells in that same rule and follow it with a rule to style specific rows, columns, or cells. So, to have all columns except the first centered and the first left aligned, use this:

.tablepress thead th, .tablepress tfoot th, .tablepress tbody td {
   padding: 2px 15px;
   text-align: center;
}
.tablepress thead th.column-1, .tablepress tfoot th.column-1, .tablepress tbody td.column-1 {
   text-align: left;
}

Since the last rule found for an element sets the style, and the ‘text-align: left;’ rule for column-1 is found after the general rule, column-1 will align left.

Where are the tables you mentioned? Please post links to your site where the problem can be seen.

For the first case, the cell is defined using th, not td. Try changing the td to th.

For the second, there is a rule further down that styles the even/odd rows. That rule is overriding yours. To make your rule take precedence, try adding the !important qualifier:

.tablepress-id-41 .column-1 {
   background-color: #00AEEF !important;
}

I think a more specific rule was overriding the column rule, but still asleep at the wheel!