Irene,
Word's columns are newspaper-like snaking columns. That means when you enter
text in one column and it reaches the end of that column the text then moves
over to the next column. They work great, if that is the feature you want. If
you would rather have independent columns, you might consider creating a
one-row table with as many columns as you want. You can also set the table's
border to "None" so that the table will not show when printing. It depends
which features you want as to which way is best. But unless I need the
newspaper-like snaking feature, I prefer to use tables.
Steven Craig Miller