Unexpected carriage return using columnbreak and bullets

[Matt Cope]

hi

i am getting some strange behaviour in word when typing bullet text into
multiple columns. in the second column word insists on inserting an extra
carriage return after every manual one that i type so that each line is
double spaced.

this is occuring under the following conditions

create new document,
type some text
insert continuous section break
apply format to 2nd section with 2 columns (default settings)
apply bullet style format to 1st column
type some text and carriage returns
insert columnbreak at end of last line of bullet text
type some text and carriage returns into 2nd column

text will be separated by an extra carriage return

if the bullet style format is reapplied to the text then the extra carriage
returns do not dissappear, but just have the bullet added.


this problem has occured on multiple machines using word 97 and 2000

any information or solutions much appreciated
cheers
matt

 

[Stefan Blom]

The problem is with the column break. Make sure that the
break is preceded and followed by a paragraph that has no
bullet formatting applied. If you do that, the problem
goes away:

Text of first section.¶<Section Break -- continuous>
-First Bullet Item¶ ¶ (Unbulleted item)
-Second Bullet item¶ -First bullet item¶
-Third Bullet item¶ -Second bullet item¶
¶ (unbulleted item) -Third bullet¶
<column break>

Note that you can set a very small font size for the
unbulleted items, say, 1 point; that way, they won't be
visible in the document.

A completely different way to get around this problem
would be to use a two-column table with no borders instead
of a two-column section. Then you don't need the section
break, and, above all, you don't need to insert a manual
column break.

Stefan