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About this lesson

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

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

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
96.8 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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  • 00:03 Hello.
  • 00:05 In this lesson, we're gonna be using the layout ribbon again, and
  • 00:08 we're gonna be focusing on columns, but here is why we're gonna focus on columns.
  • 00:12 It actually helps your reader, as you can see,
  • 00:16 I have a little example of a newspaper here.
  • 00:19 It helps to read a lot of text when your eye just tracks over a couple inches.
  • 00:24 You can actually skim through a lot of text faster, that's why newspapers
  • 00:28 still use the column format, business letters is a different purpose, but
  • 00:32 newspapers, they just want you to skim through their text.
  • 00:34 Okay, so here's how you do this.
  • 00:36 First of all, let's go ahead and select all the text on the screen.
  • 00:39 So I'm gonna Control + Shift + Down arrow to select all my text and I'm going to
  • 00:43 come right back up to, just scroll up to the top so I can see what I'm doing.
  • 00:47 And on the layout ribbon, on Columns, choose two columns, and
  • 00:51 you can see what's gonna happen there we have it, two columns, just like that.
  • 00:55 And I can scroll down so you can see how it rolled to the next screen.
  • 00:58 All right, I can Control Z right now because I just did the action.
  • 01:02 So Control Z and now I'm going to make it into three columns, there you go.
  • 01:07 All right, and now, I wanna make it into four columns.
  • 01:10 So Control Z, come back here, and I'm gonna go to more Columns, Change this.
  • 01:15 There's only One, Two, Three, Left, and Right here.
  • 01:18 So I'm going to change this to 4 columns, and you saw all the changes happen, and
  • 01:22 if you want you can even put a line between those columns.
  • 01:25 I never want to put unnecessary writing or pixels on my screen,
  • 01:30 but I do want you to see what it looks like when you add that line.
  • 01:34 This really look nice.
  • 01:35 Okay, so what if it's tomorrow and you can't do the controls?
  • 01:40 Seeing or opening this up tomorrow, you decide, four column is much too skinny.
  • 01:44 All you have to do is just select that text again and
  • 01:48 then come right back up to the column section, and tell it one column,
  • 01:52 which is your standard business letter.
  • 01:54 So, one column and then of course, I think it automatically turned off the lines, but
  • 01:58 we want to check all the unchecked we are.
  • 02:01 Let’s see, if I go to two, uncheck the line between and
  • 02:03 now turn it to one column, there we have it.
  • 02:06 All right so now what if I want just columns in between?
  • 02:09 Like I want this full paragraph,
  • 02:11 I want these two paragraphs broken into two columns, and then everything else.
  • 02:15 Whatever you select is where the columns will apply.
  • 02:18 Okay?
  • 02:18 You are in total control.
  • 02:20 So I'm just going to select those two paragraphs and the columns, click two,
  • 02:23 and we're done, just like that, didn't alter anything else on my screen.
  • 02:27 So there you have it, that is how you apply columns.
  • 02:30 And, again, it's to help your reader just track quickly
  • 02:34 what you want them to skim through.
  • 02:36 Okay?
  • 02:36 Okay, thank you.

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