Word XP column question

J

Joe Fisher

The lady that teaches 8th grade computers has the kids doing pamphlets.
They're pretty cool, but a couple things are cropping up.

Denise typed her document *without* columns. Now she wants to put it in
columns. She makes two columns, it seems to almost work in terms of
coralling her existing text, but when she continues to type, it won't stay
in the column. Is there any way to make it so when she types it stays in
columns?
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

If Denise has selected all her text and formatted it using the Columns
button on the Formatting toolbar, and if there were any empty paragraphs
after the text, then Word has inserted a section break at the end of the
multi-column section. A better choice is to go to Format | Columns (without
any text selected) and select the number of columns, which will then be
applied to the entire document. As convenient as the toolbar button is (and
I admit I use it at a lot), it is always safer to use the Columns dialog
because this assures that the "Equal column width" box gets checked. It
*isn't* checked by default when you use the Columns button, and that can
sometimes cause perplexing error messages when you try to change the
document margins.
 
J

Joe Fisher

Thank you for the prompt answer Suzanne.
Joe
Suzanne S. Barnhill said:
If Denise has selected all her text and formatted it using the Columns
button on the Formatting toolbar, and if there were any empty paragraphs
after the text, then Word has inserted a section break at the end of the
multi-column section. A better choice is to go to Format | Columns
(without
any text selected) and select the number of columns, which will then be
applied to the entire document. As convenient as the toolbar button is
(and
I admit I use it at a lot), it is always safer to use the Columns dialog
because this assures that the "Equal column width" box gets checked. It
*isn't* checked by default when you use the Columns button, and that can
sometimes cause perplexing error messages when you try to change the
document margins.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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