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About this lesson

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

Lesson versions

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2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Using Columns .docx
60.5 KB Using Columns - Solution.docx
59.9 KB

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:

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

  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:
  5. In the “More Columns” box, you can also adjust the width measurement of the columns as well as the space between them.
  6. To switch back to one full page of text that spans the full page:
  1. Select the text to set back to full page
  2. Click the Page Layout Ribbon
  3. Click Columns
  4. Select “One” as the option           
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  • 00:04 In this lesson I want to introduce you to using columns for a newsletter.
  • 00:08 On the screen, I have a little clip of a newspaper article on here,
  • 00:13 just to demonstrate that newspapers, for centuries,
  • 00:17 have divided long text into narrow columns.
  • 00:20 And that is because the human eye can track
  • 00:23 long text easier if it's divided up in narrow columns.
  • 00:27 It's just easier to scan back and forth as you read.
  • 00:29 I'm gonna go ahead and delete that little clip, and
  • 00:32 now we're gonna work with that document text.
  • 00:34 Go ahead and select the document text that is on your screen, so
  • 00:38 we can begin to apply columns to it.
  • 00:41 Now, if you go up to the page layout ribbon,
  • 00:44 you have a button over here that says columns.
  • 00:46 When you click columns, notice that the first one is already selected.
  • 00:51 That's because, in general,
  • 00:54 a document with full text left to right is absolutely in one column.
  • 00:58 So by default, that first one is chosen.
  • 01:01 Let's go ahead and select two, and there you go,
  • 01:03 you've divided your text into two columns.
  • 01:06 Now how about three columns?
  • 01:08 Now if I choose four columns, it's going to be very narrow.
  • 01:11 It's not going to make much sense on here.
  • 01:13 But if we change our orientation to landscape,
  • 01:17 and then scroll down, and then you go ahead and
  • 01:20 apply four columns, four isn't even an option, so we must go to more columns.
  • 01:25 When you click more columns, now we have the option right here,
  • 01:28 under number of columns, we can type a number four.
  • 01:32 You can also change the column width and the spacing between the columns
  • 01:36 to get very particular of how you want this to lay out.
  • 01:40 I'm going ahead and hit okay, and there I have four columns.
  • 01:42 All right, well I want to change this all back to the way it was.
  • 01:47 I'm gonna change my orientation back to portrait, and I'm going
  • 01:50 to change my column back to one, that sets it all back into one single column again.
  • 01:55 What if I just want these two paragraphs, paragraph two and
  • 01:58 three, to be split into two columns?
  • 02:01 Then you simply just select the text that you want this to apply to.
  • 02:05 Remember, the computer only does what you tell it to, so if you tell it you're only
  • 02:10 working with two columns, I'm sorry, if you tell it you're only working
  • 02:13 with two paragraphs, then it will only apply columns to those two paragraphs.
  • 02:18 Go ahead and click two, and there you go.
  • 02:20 So please go ahead and experiment with columns on this page, and
  • 02:25 that's why you use columns.
  • 02:27 Just makes your newsletter easier to read when you're dealing with long
  • 02:32 areas of text.

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