Using Columns

Quick reference

• 00:05 You can easily apply columns to your text.
• 00:08 There's just a couple buttons you need to know about first, but
• 00:10 let's talk about why we want to apply columns.
• 00:13 If you're writing a very long article style document, it's easier for
• 00:19 the end user, for their eyes to just scan back and forth within a narrow column,
• 00:24 than it is for their eyes to track from the left all the way to the right,
• 00:27 then left all the way to the right.
• 00:29 It's really hard to read a long document that is a full page wide.
• 00:33 So that is why newspapers,
• 00:34 since the beginning of time until current, they just used a little two inch column.
• 00:38 It's just ease of reading for their users.
• 00:40 All right, let's go ahead and
• 00:41 apply some columns to this text that I've got on my screen right now.
• 00:46 So I do have some random text underneath.
• 00:48 So here's the deal, you just simply select all the data that you want
• 00:52 to have in columns, all the text, and then you'll apply the columns button,
• 00:56 which happens to be sitting up on the layout, right up here, columns, okay?
• 01:00 So first of all, I'm gonna go ahead and select the text.
• 01:02 So I'm clicking in front of me, text and I'm gonna hit Ctrl+Shift and E and D.
• 01:07 The end button, Ctrl+Shift end, select all the text to the bottom of
• 01:12 the document, I'm just gonna scroll up so we can make sure what it looks like.
• 01:16 Click on columns and choose Two.
• 01:18 When you click on two, there you have it.
• 01:19 You've got two full columns.
• 01:21 When you change your mind and you want Three, click on columns, choose three.
• 01:24 Okay, what if I decide I want four columns?
• 01:27 Well, click on columns and notice there's no four.
• 01:29 But you can come down here to this option that says, More Columns.
• 01:33 When I click that one, now in here,
• 01:35 where it says number of columns, I can tell it 4 columns.
• 01:39 You can even adjust the width of the columns if you want.
• 01:42 You can also do that on the ruler when we come back out.
• 01:45 Gonna go ahead and hit okay, and there we have it.
• 01:48 There's our four columns.
• 01:49 It looks very narrow, but remember I'm on an 8 and a half by 11 sheet of paper,
• 01:53 so yes it is very narrow.
• 01:54 Notice what will happen to your ruler up on top,
• 01:56 you have full control to change these settings inside the ruler.
• 02:01 Notice I only changed one of them, but
• 02:02 they all kinda reflected that change, okay?
• 02:05 All right, I wanna Ctrl+Z to undo that.
• 02:07 I'm gonna Ctrl+Z, Z, Z, until this all goes away,
• 02:10 'cause I wanna take a look at that newspaper article again right up here, see this?
• 02:14 Now, notice they have lines, black lines between these columns.
• 02:18 Now, personally, I'm not always a fan of putting on more ink.
• 02:22 It's already very busy with ink, but for some reasons the add lines up there.
• 02:25 Maybe that's something you would like as well.
• 02:27 Let's do this again.
• 02:28 I'm gonna click into, select all the data, and I'm going to go up to my columns.
• 02:33 I'm going to choose Three columns this time, but I want those lines.
• 02:36 So I'll hit the drop down on the columns one more time.
• 02:38 Way at the bottom, more columns.
• 02:40 And look right over here, there's a little button called Line between, click.
• 02:45 When I hit OK, there we have it.
• 02:47 Now we have a line between all the columns.
• 02:49 All right, now let's undo this.
• 02:51 Now I'm working on this right now so technically,
• 02:54 I could hit Ctrl+Z to undo this.
• 02:55 But what if it's gonna say, the week later I open this,
• 02:58 I decide no columns, I don't want any columns.
• 03:01 Again, you simply have to select the data, so we're in the text.
• 03:05 Ctrl+Shift+End, Ctrl+Shift+End to select it all,
• 03:09 the standard business letter is simply a One Column letter.
• 03:13 So I can wipe it out right now, one column.
• 03:16 There we go, all my columns are gone.
• 03:18 But did I get rid of that line?
• 03:20 I don't know.
• 03:21 So let's go back to Columns, go to the More Columns, and
• 03:24 notice that Line still has a check mark, well it won't let me uncheck it here, so
• 03:28 I'm goinna very quickly switch to 2 columns.
• 03:30 Uncheck the box switched to 1 column, who's the wiser?
• 03:35 There we go, hit OK, one last little trick.
• 03:37 Maybe I just want two paragraphs within this text to be broken into columns.
• 03:43 So I just select those two paragraphs, cut my columns, hit Two.
• 03:46 There you have it.
• 03:47 All right, have fun with columns and
• 03:50 they're not as hard as everyone thinks they are.
• 03:51 Thank you.

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