I've never encountered any problems doing multi-column page layouts in Word - including for newsletters (which I've done many of, over the years). The real problem you're likely to run into, though, is that Word documents are liable to change layout slightly when viewed on different computers due to Word's use of the active printer driver to optimise the layout. Accordingly, you're always better off distributing PDFs.
Since you're using Word 2003, you'll need a 3rd-party program to create PDFs from a Word document. Adobe Acrobat Pro 8 is available as a free download (see:
http://www.techspot.com/downloads/46...at-8-free.html - note the serial# mentioned there).
Updates, to bring it up to 8.3.1 are available from: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobat/win/8.x/
Note 1: If you install the updates, you need to install them in order (8.1.0>8.1.1, etc.) and, although three of them will prompt to reboot, you don't need to do so until all of the updates are installed. Your AV software may also mis-identify a print spooler in the last few updates as potential viruses - just tell it to accept them as legit.
Note 2: If you want to use Adobe Acrobat Pro 8 as a Print Driver, you'll need to go to Start>Devices and Printers>Adobe PDF>Right-Click>Printer Properties>Advanced, then click the 'Print Directly to Printer' radio button.
As for purchasing a later version of Word, the current version is Word 2016 and you'll need to license an edition of the Office 2016 suite to get it. For licensing & pricing options, see:
https://products.office.com/en-us/products/