How to Add Columns in Microsoft Word? All You Need to Know

(Note: This guide on how to add columns in Word is suitable for all MS Word versions including Office 365)

Columns are used in newspapers, magazines, academic journals, and newsletters. They improve the document’s organization and its readability. Word allows you to adjust columns by including page breaks to utilize all of the available space on the page. You can format the document in a newspaper-style column by adding columns. 

You’ll Learn:

• Add Columns in Word
• Adding Column Breaks
• Remove Columns
• Customize Columns
• Navigating Between Columns
  • Through the Menu
  • Through Keyboard Shortcut
• Show Text Boundaries
• Inserting Multiple Columns in a Document
• Insert a Line Between Two Columns

Select the Layout tab, then choose from the options available. You can make your text appear in two, three, left-aligned, or right-aligned.

Add Columns in Word

Select the text where you wish to apply the column formatting. Choose any of the formats from the drop-down menu and click it. The two-column format splits your column into two or more columns.

If you wish to have customized columns, select More Columns. Here, you can choose your width and spacing or use one of the preset methods.

There are four basic types of columns that can be applied to the text.

• Book – the text continues from one column to the next on reaching the bottom of a page.
• Newspaper – the text continues elsewhere in the article if it is not completed on a page.
• Table – the vertical field of cells within a table or a database.
• Tabbed – these columns are used in a menu to display an item on the left and its details on the right. The tabbed column can have more than just two columns. When it has more details, it appears as the third or fourth column spaced by tabbing to a specific measurement.

Adding Column Breaks

A column break inserts a hard break in the inserted location and forces the rest of the text to appear in the next column. It controls the flow of text from one column to the next.

Position your cursor at the place where you wish the column break to appear. Then click on Layout -> Breaks -> Column. In the example above, the cursor was placed before the subheading “Post Hashtags” and then the column page break was clicked.

After applying that option, you find that the subheading is pushed to the next column and the text follows it as shown below.

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Remove Columns

To remove the columns in the text, select the entire text and click on One column and it removes the formatting that was applied to it.

Customize Column

To customize the columns, click on More Columns. By default, the Presets has automatically formatted columns with equal spacings between the columns. You can check the box Line between if you wish to have a line between two columns.

If you don’t wish to have equal spacings between two columns, uncheck the box Equal column width at the bottom of the dialog box.

Under the Width and spacing option, you can preset the column width and the spacing between them for the columns that you have in the document. This formatting can be applied to either the selected text, selected section, or the whole document.  

Navigating Between Columns

It is tricky to navigate from one column to another. Sometimes, you have to type in the first column and end it to start typing in the second column. To do that, insert column breaks before the text from where you want the text to appear in the second column. If you are using a table, it is easy to navigate between the cells just by making use of the Tab key.

Through Menu

Page breaks can be applied by clicking on the layout tab first, then clicking breaks and choosing columns.

Through Keyboard Shortcut

Place the cursor near the text that you want to display in the new column. Press Ctrl + Shift + Enter simultaneously and you can find the further text shifting to the second column.

Show Text Boundaries

Text boundaries are dotted lines that appear in the document to mark the limits of text elements. When you use text boundaries, dotted lines appear around the margins of your text, around the headers, footers, footnotes, etc.

Select File -> Options -> Advanced -> Show document content -> Show text boundaries to apply text boundaries.

After you apply these options, the text appears like this. This feature is useful if you work often with Print Layout View.

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Inserting Multiple Columns in a Document

While typing in a new document, you can include two or more columns and later decide that you want to stick onto a single paragraph itself. Place the cursor at the place where there’s no further text and click on Layout -> Columns -> More Columns. At the bottom of the dialog box, you will notice a drop-down menu Apply to. Choose This point forward to make the text that follows the two-column paragraph appear in a single paragraph.

Insert a Line Between Two Columns

When you add columns in word, you can insert a line between the columns to show the division between the columns. A line can be drawn between two or three columns by clicking on the options Layout -> Columns -> More Columns -> Line between.

You can see a line between the two columns after you select the check box. You must remember that this checkbox gets enabled only if you have a text to appear as two or three columns. You can see that the option is not enabled if it is a single paragraph.

You have the text split into two columns and a line dividing them. Now, you wish to change the column width and the spacing between them. You can do that by unchecking the checkbox Equal column width at the bottom of the dialog box. After you click OK, you can see the column width of column 1  has increased.

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Closing Thoughts

Adding columns in Word improves the document’s readability and appearance. You can fit a little more text when you lay it out in the columns rather than laying it out in a single line. The shorter lines are easier to read as the reader’s eyes need not travel to the end of the page to read it.

In this article, we saw how to add column breaks, customize a column, and modify its width and spacings. You can explore every option in the Columns menu and try using it in your document.

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Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!