| | Product Information Help and How-to Training Templates Related Products and Technologies Support and Feedback Technical Resources Additional Resources | Warning: You are viewing this page with an unsupported Web browser. This Web site works best with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later, Firefox 1.5, or Netscape Navigator 8.0 or later. Learn more about supported browsers.
Troubleshoot newsletter-style columns
Columns don't work in headers, footers, comments, or text boxes.
You can't use newsletter-style columns in headers, footers (header and footer: A header, which can consist of text or graphics, appears at the top of every page in a section. A footer appears at the bottom of every page. Headers and footers often contain page numbers, chapter titles, dates, and author names.), comments (comment: A note or annotation that an author or reviewer adds to a document. Microsoft Word displays the comment in a balloon in the margin of the document or in the Reviewing Pane.), or text boxes (text box: A movable, resizable container for text or graphics. Use text boxes to position several blocks of text on a page or to give text a different orientation from other text in the document.). To arrange text in these areas, use a table (table: One or more rows of cells commonly used to display numbers and other items for quick reference and analysis. Items in a table are organized into rows and columns.).
The columns will not balance.
- If you are working on a document that was converted from another program, you might need to adjust a compatibility option. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Compatibility tab. Clear the Don't balance columns for Continuous section starts check box.
- You might have paragraph formatting that is interfering with the balancing of newsletter-style columns. On the Format menu, click Paragraph, and then click the Line and Page Breaks tab. Clear the Widow/Orphan control, Keep lines together, Keep with next, and Page break before check boxes.
The text in the columns is much narrower (or wider) than I expected.
The text may have an indent or hanging indent applied to it. Click in the text, and then look at the ruler. If an indent marker is to the right or left of the column marker, drag the indent marker to align it with the column marker. You can also modify indents by using the Paragraph command on the Format menu.
The vertical lines between columns don't appear or print.
This occurs in a Word document that is formatted with newsletter-style columns when all of the following conditions are true:
To display and print the vertical lines in the section that contains newsletter-style columns, do one of the following:
-
Insert another section break (section break: A mark you insert to show the end of a section. A section break stores the section formatting elements, such as the margins, page orientation, headers and footers, and sequence of page numbers.). To do this, click at the end of the section that contains multiple columns, but before the section break that starts the landscape orientation. On the Insert menu, click Break, and then click Continuous.
- You can also click Line
on the Drawing
toolbar (toolbar: A bar with buttons and options that you use to carry out commands. To display a toolbar, press ALT and then SHIFT+F10.) to draw a vertical black line between each newsletter-style column. To change the appearance of the line — for instance, to change the line weight or color — right-click the line and click Format AutoShape on the shortcut menu. Click the Colors and Lines tab, and select the options you want.
I can't remove newsletter-style columns.
To remove a newspaper-style column, you must place the cursor in the portion of the document that contains multiple columns, making sure that the cursor is not in a heading that spans multiple columns.
|