How have 2 columns without using second column?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andy
  • Start date Start date
A

Andy

I am on XP Pro/SP2 with Office Pro 2003.

----

In Word I want to have two columns:

(1) I want the text of what was said at a meeting in the left (larger)
column.
(2) I want to put the odd comment in the right column.


Can I do this in Word?
 
One option - Try using a 2-Column *Table* rather than newspaper-type Column
layout.
 
Andy said:
One option - Try using a 2-Column *Table* rather than
newspaper-type Column layout.

Bob Jones, [MVP] Office:Mac
Click to expand...


Bob, a table makes for a lot of work skipping between cells because
the left side will be a transcript of what was said at a meeting
lasting 45 minutes.

Any other ideas?
 
Well, you could use my suggestion instead.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Try using tables format, instead of columns. Just a suggestion. It might
work. I don't know about Publisher. I have never tried with that. I do go
to websites that have attachments and comments, but have never tried to
create them. It's worth a try in word. I just experiment until I find a
way. No manual will ever be able to answer any of our questions, except
simpliest -- unless you want to spend the rest of your life learning all the
updates that are supposed to be so useful.
 
Hmm. Could have sworn I'd posted, but I think I was thinking of another
thread in which someone wanted a column of empty space for inserting
handwritten notes. I think you are trying to insert comments in the actual
Word document, though, so my article at
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/MarginalText.htm might offer a better
way.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Hmm. Could have sworn I'd posted, but I think I was thinking of
another thread in which someone wanted a column of empty space for
inserting handwritten notes. I think you are trying to insert
comments in the actual Word document, though, so my article at
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/MarginalText.htm might offer a
better way.
Click to expand...


Really good article. Thank you.

Can I ask one extra thing. If I have a lot of text in another file and
I create a 2 column table in MS Word (with lots of rows) then when I
paste all the text goes into a single cell of the table.

Is there a way to go through this text and insert a "row dividing
lines" (which would go right across the table) at various points?

I hope can see what I mean.
 
I can see what you mean, but I don't think there's any way to do what you
want quite the way you say. If you paste the text into a table as is, you'll
end up having to repeatedly split cells (or insert new rows) and drag text
into the new cells. What you could try instead is this:

Assuming you have multiple paragraphs of text that you want to put in a
table, and that you want each paragraph in its own cell, all in the left (or
right) column, the other column left empty, then you can do it by
converting.

The trick is that you want Word to make each paragraph of text a cell, but
you will also need empty paragraphs to create empty cells. If you've set up
your manuscript "wrong" (in typical user fashion) with an empty paragraph
between paragraphs to create a blank line, then you're actually all set for
this exercise. If you've created it correctly, with no empty paragraphs,
then you'll need to add them; you can do this by using Find and Replace to
replace ^p with ^p^p.

Once you have text paragraphs and empty paragraphs alternating, select the
text and use Table | Convert | Text to Table, separating at paragraphs. Word
will suggest either one column or some wild number, so change the number of
columns to 2. If you want the left column blank, begin your selection with
an empty paragraph; if you want the right column blank, start with a text
paragraph and end with an empty paragraph. Word will create a two column
table with all the text in the left (or right) column, one paragraph per
row.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
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