I want the headings in my multi-column document to span the columns. How can I achieve this?

Article contributed by Suzanne S. Barnhill  

If you want a heading to span all of your columns, you need only leave it in the single-column section before your multicolumn section. If there isn't a single-column section there already, you'll need to create one. This is easily done by selecting the heading paragraph, clicking on the Columns button on the Standard toolbar or Page Layout tab, and selecting 1 column; Word will then create the necessary section breaks for you.

But what if you want a heading to span just some of the columns? In a four-panel brochure, for example, suppose you want text to span two of the four panels. Once you have four columns, you can’t re-divide just part of the page into two or three columns. You will therefore need to put your heading text into a text box or frame and position it as needed (the problems of positioning text boxes and frames could provide material for another article, so I won’t go into that here).

Whether you use a frame or a text box, it will have a border by default. Remove this as follows:

• Remove a border from a frame using the Borders and Shading dialog. Access this dialog from the Format menu in Word 2003 and earlier. In Word 2007, click the arrow beside the border button in the Paragraph group on the Home tab. In the dialog, choose None. Alternatively, choose No Border from the Borders palette or menu accessed via the button on the Formatting toolbar in Word 2003 and earlier or in Home | Paragraph in Word 2007.

• Remove the border from a text box in Word 2003 and earlier by selecting No Line on the Colors and Lines tab of the Text Box dialog, accessed by double-clicking the edge of the text box. In Word 2007, selecting a text box will display the contextual Text Box Tools Format tab; in the Text Box Styles group, click Shape Outline and choose No Outline.

If you use a frame, it doesn’t seem to matter whether you set wrapping to None or Around. For a text box, the default wrapping style in many versions is None of In Front of Text, which will not work (nor will Through). Any other wrapping style seems to be satisfactory. You will need to experiment with the other layout options to find which ones work best for your situation.

You may want to wait till you’re fairly far along in entering text before you insert a text box or frame because the effect of doing this is to reduce the text boundaries to the amount of text you have entered (instead of showing the four rectangles you saw when you first created the columns). This can be rather disconcerting.

See also The strait and narrow – using columns.