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About this lesson
Learn to divide text into long columns to make the best use of paper.
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Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Using Columns .docx195.1 KB Using Columns - Solution.docx
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Quick reference
Using Columns in a Newsletter
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:
- Select the section of text on the document that will be split into columns.
- Click the Page Layout Ribbon, then click Columns.
- Choose how many columns by selecting one of the options.
- 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.
- In the “More Columns” box, you can also adjust the width measurement of the columns as well as the space between them.
- To switch back to one full page of text that spans the full page:
- Select the text to set back to full page.
- Click the Page Layout Ribbon.
- Click Columns.
- Select “One” as the option.
- 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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