Hello Chris,
I am not sure if you are referring to snaking columns like newspaper style columns, columns in tables, columns set up on tabs or text box columns. The information shown below does not include text box columns as they really don't work too well most of the time. NEWSPAPER STYLE COLUMNS Let us say that you are using two newspaper style columns in your document. If you want the column on the right to be right aligned and the left-hand column to stay left aligned then do the following: 1. Move the PC cursor into column 2 just past the column break. This can often be done by using Alt with down arrow key if the cursor is in column 1. If you hear the words "column break" then use right arrow once to move into the next column. 2. After navigating to the beginning of column 2 press Alt followed by P followed by J to activate the column button in the page layout tab of the ribbon. 3. Use up or down arrow key until you get to the "right" choice and press enter key. If you read the current position of the cursor after pressing enter key you will find that the column has been moved to the right. The above works best for two columns. The reason for this is that if you right-align a second column and the text on a given line in the column doesn't leave enough room for the third column to be in the margin, the third column will be moved to the left and start on the next page. When you use the right-align in a second column you should make sure that there is enough room within the margins for the text. If the text in a third column wraps to the beginning of a line on the second page and you adjust your margins at that point, you will also need to go back to the columns choice and set them to three again as they will have been set back to two columns by Word. You can also move in a document column to column by using the find command. CTRL+F brings up the find dialog box. Type in a caret followed by the letter "n." Shift with the number 6 gives the caret and then use the n without any spacing. Use Alt+F while in the dialog to activate the "find next" button. Press escape when the first column break is found. You can now use the CTRL with page down to move to the next column break and CTRL with page up to move to a previous column break. Use shift+enter key to force a line break within a column. Use CTRL+shift+enter key to force a column break. TABLE COLUMNS It is easier when working with columns in a table. Let us say you have created a table with two columns. You can right-align the second column as follows: 1. Move the cursor into column 2. 2. Press application key and down arrow to the "auto fit" menu choice. 3. Use right arrow into the submenu and then down arrow to the "fixed column width" choice and press enter key. The aligning works better with fixed column widths. If the column is set to auto fit to content then the column width continues to be adjusted to fit the amount of text in the cell, which can alter the effects of aligning. 4. Press alt followed by J followed by L followed by K to bring up the table selection menu. 5. Use down arrow to the "column" choice and press enter key. 6. Use CTRL+R to right-align the selected column. Use steps 4, 5 and 6 in the previous list for each additional column that you want to right-align. You can use CTRL+E to center or CTRL+L to left-align instead of CTRL+R to right-align the column if you want to. COLUMNS ON TABS This is not really the most efficient or effective way to set up a column on the left and one on the right, but it can work. This method does not right-align the second column but will place it to the right of the page. 1. Press Alt followed by H followed by P followed by G to bring up the paragraph dialog box. 2. Use shift+tab five times to the "tab" button and press enter key. 3. Use tab key to the "clear all" choice and press enter key. 4. Focus will have moved to an edit box where you can type in a position where the tab stop can b placed. 5. Let us say you want the second column to start at 5.5 inches from the left margin. You will need to type in 4.5 as the position because there is already a one inch margin. 6. After typing in the position use tab key to the OK button and press enter key. 7. Whenever you want to enter text into the second column you will need to use the tab key. If you are typing in column 2 and the text wraps or you press enter key, text will be moved to the beginning of the line and not to the second column. You will have to move the cursor to the beginning of the run over text and use tab key to move it to the second column. Using the tab method for setting up the columns isn't really as good a way to use as using table columns or the newspaper column method. Hopefully, the above information is what you were wanting. Take care. Brian Lee [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chris Reagan Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 11:01 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [JAWS-Users] putting text in colombs Hi there all: I was wondering if anyone could help me with word 2007. I was wondering if someone can tell me how to put columbs of text to the left and to the write of the document? I just need to hotkeys for these actions? Thanks Chris Reagan For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
