Columns In A Word Document.

[anotheoldgit]

How do I create columns in a Word document please?

[jno]

not sure if I'm understanding this properly, but you can create blank lines at the foot of a column, or anywhere else, by pressing the return key, the big one on the right of the letters on your keyboard with an arrow that goes down and then left.

[bhg481]

That's fine jno, but all it does is create blank lines. If you then insert lines further up the column, the blank lines you've created will move over to the top of the next column and the "useful" lines in that column will move down, thus effectively leaving blank lines at the top of the second column. It's like creating "hard" spaces - if, for example, you want "London Transport" to always appear one one line ie, no line-break between "London" and "Transport" you make the space between the two words a "hard" space, so that "London Transport" counts as one word. Putting blank spaces before "London" is OK until you add words before it when you get blank spaces before "London" and "Transport" on the next line.

[anotheoldgit]

jno

That sounds feasible, thanks.

[bhg481]

It's a perfectly good working solution but just be aware that it might go all wrong if you start adding addresses in the middle of the list, rather than at the end.

[davegosling]

What is the recipient going to do with these addresses? Surely not print them onto individual envelopes?

[bhg481]

We have all our addresses in a Word document in column form, fitting the format of some labels that we have, Come Christmas we print the document straight to the labels and stick them on our Christmas card envelopes.

[anotheoldgit]

bhg481

Yes I do the same, the instructions are on the pack of labels one can buy.
But the person just asked me if I could supply a list of up to date addresses.

[bhg481]

Sorry OG, we have our addresses in TABLE form, every cell in the table having the same size, which fits our labels, with one address in each cell. That way you can easily pad each address with blank lines to fill the cell but it's not easy to insert an address in the middle of the table to keep it alphabetic.

[davegosling]

Far easier is to store the addresses in something like Excel or Access where old ones can be removed and new ones added without causing any issues of gaps or anything like that.

Then it's a simple matter of using Word's built-in mailmerge facility. You simply tell it where to find the data and how to output it.