Setting Up Multi-page Columns

Ivan has been struggling trying to set up parallel columns that go from one page to the next. What he wants is, in landscape mode, to have three columns on the page. When the text reaches the bottom of a column, it flows to the same column on the next page, not to the next column on the same page.

The best solution for this is to use a table with a single row and as many columns as you need. The row can span multiple pages, and the text will stay in each cell of the table, as desired. You may have to play around with the formatting a bit (turning off borders, adjusting interior spacing, locking column width, adding columns for additional spacing, etc.), but once you get the hang of it, the approach is quite simple.

There is a caveat to all this, of course. Tables, while they can span multiple pages, can do some funny things if they span many, many pages. It is a good idea to periodically start a new row. If you do lots of this type of formatting, it is an even better idea to get a desktop publishing program, such as InDesign, which can make very short work of such layout challenges.