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About this lesson

Learn to divide text into long columns to make the best use of available space.

Quick reference

Using Columns

Learn to divide text into long columns to make the best use of paper.

When to use

Changing text to view in columns is helpful for long articles in newsletters.  The human eye can track back and forth across text faster when the text is split into narrow columns.

Instructions

To place columns into existing text:

  1. Select the section of text on the document that will be split into columns.   
  2. Click the Layout Ribbon, then click Columns: ​
  3. Choose how many columns by selecting one of the options.

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  4. If you would like to apply 4 columns, the option isn’t on the list. Simply click “More Columns” and type “4” in the number of columns box:
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  5. In the “More Columns” box, you can also adjust the width measurement of the columns as well as the space between them.
  6. After columns have been applied, there is no “cancel” or “off” button.

To switch back to one full page of text with no columns:

  1. Select the existing columns of text
  2. Click the Layout Ribbon
  3. Click Columns
  4. Select “One” as the option (because every full-page document only has 1 column)
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  • 00:05 In this lesson, we're going to be talking about splitting up
  • 00:08 a document into columns, similar to a newsletter.
  • 00:11 And I have an example of a newspaper clipping.
  • 00:14 It's kind of cool to look at because there's a lesson they use columns.
  • 00:17 It's easier for the reader to quickly scan back and forth a two inch column
  • 00:22 than it is for the reader to scan the entire length of a full page article.
  • 00:27 So that is why there is a reason we use columns.
  • 00:31 In this case, they also have lines between the columns,
  • 00:33 I'll show you how to apply that as well.
  • 00:35 All right, let's scroll down to our document and our instructions.
  • 00:39 First of all, we're going to select all the paragraphs below this list,
  • 00:42 and we're going to apply two columns with the layout columns and number two.
  • 00:46 So we will first select all of the paragraphs.
  • 00:49 Click in front of the first paragraph, Ctrl+Shift+End, E-N-D.
  • 00:53 And that selected everything spilling to the second page as well.
  • 00:58 Now, I'll go to the Layout ribbon > the Columns button > and choose Two.
  • 01:03 As you can see on the Navigation pane, we can see that yes,
  • 01:06 it did split it into two columns, and then spilled the remaining to the second page.
  • 01:11 Now, to undo that very quickly, we press Ctrl+Z to undo it because I just did it.
  • 01:16 So the Ctrl+Z is still available, Ctrl+Z.
  • 01:20 And as you can see on the Navigation pane we're back to just a single column.
  • 01:24 Yes, one letter is a single column, keep that in mind, that'll save you some day.
  • 01:29 All right, next instruction, select all of the paragraphs,
  • 01:32 they still are selected because I haven't clicked off of them.
  • 01:35 Now we're going to select four columns, so I'll go up to the Columns button, but
  • 01:40 it only gives the option of One, Two, or Three, Left or Right.
  • 01:43 Well, how about more columns?
  • 01:45 That's where I find the rest of them.
  • 01:47 Now I can choose how many columns I want, four of them.
  • 01:50 I can choose the width or the spacing.
  • 01:53 I can tell it equal column width and apply to all of the selected text.
  • 01:57 And while I'm here, I'm going to go ahead and
  • 01:59 put a checkmark on the line between because that's my next step.
  • 02:03 Add lines between.
  • 02:04 I'll click on that, hit OK.
  • 02:06 And look what happened.
  • 02:08 We have the four columns with a line between them all.
  • 02:11 And I want to draw your attention to the ruler up above.
  • 02:15 The ruler up above will allow me to adjust the width between those columns.
  • 02:19 So I'll just click and drag one of them, but notice they're all adjusting,
  • 02:24 not just that one.
  • 02:25 I don't have to do anything with the text, it adjusts itself.
  • 02:29 Well, now I want to change that back to one column,
  • 02:33 so I'm going to go up to the Columns ribbon and hit the One.
  • 02:37 Back to my normal letterhead.
  • 02:39 But that add line between is still in there.
  • 02:42 So let's go up there and we'll switch this, very quickly, to More Columns.
  • 02:48 Notice my line between is grayed out, I don't have the option to turn it off.
  • 02:53 So I'm going to trick it into working.
  • 02:55 I'm going to switch this quickly to two columns, turn off a line between,
  • 03:00 switch it to one column, and who is the wiser?
  • 03:03 Hit OK, and there we have it.
  • 03:05 Okay, so for the final example, I just want the second and
  • 03:09 third paragraph to be switched to column.
  • 03:12 So second and third paragraph,
  • 03:15 come up to my Column button and change that to Two columns.
  • 03:19 And there it is, a great way to split columns within a document text.
  • 03:24 Okay, have fun with that one, it's a great exercise to get to know the columns.
  • 03:29 And especially if you are laying out a newsletter,
  • 03:31 it's kind of great to know how to control the columns and put lines between.

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