Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Quickly Changing Columns.
Word provides a tool on the Page Layout (Layout if you are using Word 2106 or a later version) tab of the ribbon that you can use to modify the number of columns in your document or in a text selection. If you click on the Columns tool (which is in the Page Setup group) Word shows a list of six options:
To use the Columns tool, simply choose one of the options. If you have a text selection selected prior to using the tool, then the choice you make is applied only to that selected text. If you don't have any text selected, then the entire section in which the insertion pointer is located is formatted using the number of columns you chose.
If you don't like the results of the layout change, you can immediately press Ctrl+Z to undo the formatting change.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7914) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Quickly Changing Columns.
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If you need to change the number of columns used in a portion of your document, it's easy to do when you use the Columns ...
Discover MoreWant to switch the number of columns used for your text, in the middle of a page? You can do this very easily by ...
Discover MoreNeed to jump from one column to another on a page? You can use the handy shortcut keys described in this tip.
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Copyright © 2019 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: 
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