10 Minute Guide to Word for Windows 95

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Arranging Text in Columns

In this lesson you'll learn how to use columns in your documents.

Why Use Columns?

Columns are commonly used in newsletters, brochures, and similar documents. The shorter lines of text provided by columns are easier to read, and also provide greater flexibility in formatting a document with graphics, tables, and so on. Word for Windows makes it easy to use columns in your documents. Figure 23.1 shows a document formatted with three columns.

Figure 23.1
A document formatted with three columns.


Note that the Word for Windows columns feature creates newspaper style columns, in which the text flows to the bottom of one column and then continues at the top of the next column on the page. For side-by-side paragraphs, such as you would need in a résumé or a script, use Word's table feature, covered in Lesson 27.

Creating Columns

Word for Windows has four predefined column layouts:

You can apply any of these column formats to all or part of a document, to selected text, or from the insertion point onward. Follow these steps:

1. If you want only a part of the document in columns, select the text that you want in columns, or move the insertion point to the location where you want columns to begin.

2. Select Format Columns to display the Columns dialog box (Figure 23.2).

3. Under Presets, click the column format that you want.

4. Pull down the Apply To list and specify the extent to which the columns should apply.

5. Turn on the Line Between option to display a vertical line between columns.

6. Select OK.

Figure 23.2
The Columns dialog box.


Timesaver Tip: Quick columns To display selected text or the entire document in 1 to 4 equal width columns, click the Columns button on the Toolbar then drag over the desired number of columns.

Screen Display of Columns

To view columns on-screen while you are editing, you must be working in Page Layout mode. In Normal mode, Word displays only a single column at a time (although your columns will be printed). To switch to Page Layout mode, select View Page Layout.

Modifying Columns

Here are the steps to follow to modify existing columns:

1. Select the text in columns that you want to modify.

2. Select Format Columns to display the Columns dialog box. The options in the dialog box will reflect the current settings for the selected columns.

3. Make changes to the column settings as desired.

4. Select OK.

Turning Columns Off

To convert multiple column text back to normal one column text, follow these steps:

1. Select the text that you want to change from multiple to a single column.

2. Select Format Columns to display the Columns dialog box.

3. Under Presets, select the One style option.

4. Select OK.

This lesson showed you how to arrange text in columns. The next lesson shows you how to use styles.


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