LibAnswers: Student Digital Skills and Assistive Technology

You may have an assignment where you need to write in two columns or midway on a page you want to split this into two columns. You can set this in Word Desktop. Please note that Word Online does not have this option. See also: How to use a combination of a one-column and a two-column layout for a journal style layout in Word.

When you open a new Word document (MS Word) by default it's one column as you type text this usually takes the whole width of the page from left to right.

You can change the layout in two columns:

Steps column layout

1. Select Layout Tab
2. Select Columns Icon
3. From the Columns drop-down select 'two' if you need the two-column layout. There are other column layouts.
4. When you add content it will be added to the first column on the left and will automatically move to the right column when it reaches the end of the page.

Steps to add a page break in a column layout.
A page break marks where one page ends and another starts. If you have a column, it's where the column ends and another column starts.

1. Select Layout Tab
2. Select breaks
3. Select 'Column' under the page break header.