
If desired, to select a preset to modify, click the desired preset button in the “Presets” section of the “Columns” dialog box. Alternatively, to create a custom column layout in Word, click the “More Columns…” command to open the “Columns” dialog box. In the drop-down menu of choices that appears, then click a preset column option. Then click the “Columns” drop-down button in the “Page Setup” button group. Then click the “Layout” tab in the Ribbon. To create columns in Word, place your cursor where you want the columns to start or select the text to separate into columns. When finished creating your custom column layout, click the “OK” button to apply your custom columns and close the dialog box. If you selected text before opening this dialog box, you can apply columns to either the “Selected text” or the “Selected sections” by choosing the desired option from this drop-down.Ī preview of the columns that will be created from your selections appears in the “Preview” section. If you select this choice, you can also check the adjacent “Start new column” checkbox to start a new column in the new section. To add them to the whole document, instead, select the “Whole document” choice from this drop-down.Īlternatively, to create a new section break from the point at which your mouse cursor is located, forward, select the “This point forward” choice, instead. If you have created a new section and have your mouse cursor within it, you can choose “This section” from this drop-down to add the columns to the current section. Next, use the “Apply to” drop-down to choose where within the document to apply the columns. If the “Equal column width” checkbox in the “Width and spacing” section is checked, however, note that you only need to adjust the desired “Width” and “Spacing” for the first column, as the other columns will have the same width and spacing. Then set the width and spacing for each column in the scrollable list of columns in the “Width and spacing” section by entering values into the “Width” and “Spacing” spinner boxes. To manually set the column width and spacing, uncheck the “Equal column width” checkbox in the “Width and spacing” section. To have equal column width, check the “Equal column width” checkbox in the “Width and spacing” section.Ĭreate Columns in Word – Instructions and Video Lesson: A picture of a user adding columns to a Word document by using the “Columns” dialog box. To apply lines between the columns, check the “Line between” checkbox. Alternatively, to specify your own number of columns, enter a number into the “Number of columns” spinner box. To select a preset to modify, click the desired preset button in the “Presets” section. Choose your column options by using the buttons, spinner boxes, checkboxes, and drop-down in this dialog box. The “Columns” dialog box lets you set the number, width, and spacing of the columns. To apply a preset column layout in Word, then click one of the listed preset column options.Īlternatively, to apply a custom column layout in Word, click the “More Columns” command to open the “Columns” dialog box. Then click the “Columns” drop-down button. Then click the “Layout” tab in the Ribbon.
Alternatively, you can select the text to separate into columns. To create columns in Word, place your cursor where you want the columns to start.
You can either select the text first or you can create a different section to which to add the columns. If you want to add columns to only a part of your document, you have two options. Also note that you can add columns to your whole document or to a selected section within a document. When you create columns in Word, the text flows from one column to the next on the same page. This is helpful for separating text vertically. You may need to create columns in Word for documents that need them, like a newsletter.