Two Column behavior

[Doug Freese]

The usual preamble I'm new to this group and to the depth and
capabilities of Word(2000 for now). I'm am, or was, a casual user but
just inherited a local newsletter. The old newsletter was a series of
cut and paste ala with scissors and tape by a delightful non-computer
person. It didn't take much to take the past months doc and OCR scan the
contents into Word. At the moment I'm staying with the very basic Normal
Style with various bolding, font size, underlining for headers.

I'm now experimenting with various permutations of two column and I
don't understand how text sometimes gets balanced in half a page and in
others it behaves as I would expect, fill the left column and off to
fill the right column. So, before I bore you any specifics is there any
place online that documents in some more detail the behavior of
muti-columns? I have a book on order which I hope will help with this
and as I get smarter I can take advantage of more than basic stuff. I
have a short runway to get the next letter out so the book may not come
in time. I hoping there some advanced help files I can reference so if
nothing else, I can ask a smarter question.

-Doug Freese

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Doug,

The mysteries of columns in Word are discussed at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/UsingColumns.htm. At one point it
answers your question about balancing columns:

"Whenever you have a multicolumn section in the middle of a page, Word
will automatically balance the columns for you. If you want the
columns to break differently (that is, unevenly), you can either
insert a column break (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) or control text flow using
the 'Keep with next' and/or 'Keep lines together' paragraph
properties."

What it doesn't say explicitly is that the thing that causes balancing
is the insertion of a continuous section break at the end of the
multicolumn text.

Another article that may be useful for you is
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/HeadingsSpanColumns.htm.

 

[Doug Freese]

Hi Doug,

Thanks Jay!! Now I have enough rope to help or hang myself. At least I
will be able to describe the rope.

Merci, Doug Freese