Hi friends,


I am writing a book using MS-WORD, and I find it to be an awesome tool to compose a book. But I have now run into a problem. You see, in my book, the page in which the chapter begins is a single column page, and the rest of the pages which contain the content are double-columned. This is the case for every chapter.Now when I delete some text in the chapter-beginning page, which is in single column, I want the text to flow from the subsequent double-columned page into the single-columned page.

But what actually happens, is that the text in the subsequent pages, when it flows into the first page, it also brings the two column layout with it. The content from the second page, flows into the first bringing with it the two column layout.

I want it in such a way that, when the text from the second page flows into the first page, it also becomes single-columned.

How to accomplish this? Please help me out.

Number of columns is a fact about the section, not the page. If I were you, I would leave it as one column until I was 100% finished with that chapter, and then change the first page to 2-columns.

This works out OK really, since it is always recommended that you paginate last thing. Just add setting columns to the list of finishing chores.

There are other tools (linked textboxes, tables) to achieve multiple-columns, but none of them will work better in this situation, and in fact would be much harder to maintain.

I sure hope this helped.

I use Word to write books too. Styles make it so easy and fun.

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Thanks Kimberly, please find my comments within the body of your reply.

Yes. Sorry about the misunderstanding.

I would make the chapter as the default... one column.
When 100% finished with the chapter, change the number of cols where desired and then insert column breaks if desired.

The advice above should solve your problem, but here are some other options for similar problems.

(1) If you already have Publisher, seriously look at copying and pasting your finished text into it. Word is great for reports, but when it comes to desktop publishing of Booklets and such, Publisher is more geared for those types of projects. You will find the management of columns and other book layout features very useful.

(2) When columns are giving me trouble in Word, I will sometimes create two text boxes (just like in Publisher) set positioned to the margins for both vertical and horizontal placement. In Word, you can set overflow text from one text box to flow into the next text box that you specify. You can use text boxes on each page to define your columns. This has a few disadvantages, but would fix the problem of page formatting flowing with text.

I disagree. Word is 1000 times more powerful than Publisher. I would recommend Publisher for flyers and labels, maybe a school newsletter, but not for a significant project. If you paste into Publisher, what happens to your style references, TOC, cross-references, index, citations, footnotes, endnotes, and fields? It seems unlikely to me that dynamic content would survive. I'd never trade a good word processor for textboxes. I mentioned that linked textboxes were an option, because I thought the topic might come up. But it is my experience that you lose way too much functionality when you use textboxes. You can't wrap text around pictures, use endnotes or footnotes or create a table of figures. The usefulness of styles is compromised... you can't cross-reference a paragraph by style, (for example, you can't use a field so the chapter title is in the header so if the chapter title changes, the header automatically changes too). Textboxes render the Document map / Navigation pane useless. Aargh! I could not survive without the Document map! Same same for Outline View... useless when using textboxes.