Hi there,



New to the forum, mainly so that I could ask for assistance with a word formatting problem. Apologies

So I'm a guitarist and I finally decided that it's time I actually made a legible book for all the songs that I play and put them in one place. It's actually been great for my playing as well, having an organised place for all my music, despite not yet being in hard copy, means I'm playing more... But back to the point;

Using Microsoft Word 2002 (I believe), I've set up the document to be two column, with the idea that i'll have one song per column, two songs per page etc, however when I insert a column break (I do this with the cursor immediately before the start of the heading of the following song, so as it is the first thing in the next column) the formatting and, I'm not sure how to word it, style? of the heading that has just been moved to the next column remain in the previous column. I only noticed the problem last night when trying to make a contents page. Where the column break moves the heading to a new page, the heading is still recognised on the preceding page, leading to errors in the TOC.
I've spent hours looking around the web and the closest I've come to anything helpful was microsoft asking for £46 before they'd even take my dilemma... And I live in Australia! (I think) I've attached a little annotated screen cap showing the problem graphically. Any help'd be fantastic!

Cheers, James

Attached Images

word column break conundrum.jpg (91.3 KB, 15 views)

When you are finishing up the 2nd column of each page, have you tried to enter a "Section Break" rather than a column break? I looked at your example and formatted a heading for each column and the formatting stayed in place.

Hi JimP,

I thought about doing something similar, ie adding a page break rather than a column break. I haven't tried it yet, though my only concern is that, as it is a constantly evolving document, if I put page breaks in places, they're likely to move as soon as I stick anything else in, and ruin the pretty format.

Would a section break have a similar effect as a page break? Sorry, I'm new to all the idiosyncracies of Word... If not, I don't really understand the purpose of section breaks? Would having section breaks following each song prevent columns?

Thanks for the suggestion, and sorry it lead to more questions! I'll give it a go as soon as I've got some time!

Thank God for Ctrl + z

James

I tried your suggestion and as I suspected it does pose problems for later when I'm adding bits and pieces to the document. I did however find a slightly inelegant fix, in placing a paragraph break before each heading. It prevents the heading format showing up on the previous page, but does mean that there is an extra blank line on the top of each page. Are there any symbols or commands or whatever that have the same properties of a pilcrow, without adding a line space?

Cheers

oh and I've tried using line breaks, with the same initial problem being encountered.

Yeah, after digesting what I originally proposed, doing so would create more problems for you. I simply created a similar columned document, inserted the section break and evaluated that insertion, and posted without giving it a thought of later consequence.