Align last row in text colums? (Word 2004 for Mac

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Greetings all,

Is there a way to make the lines of text align across columns in Word? I want both columns of newspaper-style text to print on the same lines, so that the bottom line of each column is printed at the same height from the bottom of the page. (I guess another way to put it is to say that I want Word to allow the same number of lines in both columns, even if one has headlines and graphic dividers mixed into the text.)

This seems harder to describe than it should be, but I’m guessing it’s really a simple fix — if a fix is possible.

Thanks for any help.

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It is very difficult to get all text to use the same line height, and inserting pictures only makes it that much harder. I think you will have to manually tweak your headings and dividers (using space before, space after, and/or line height) to get what you want. Although Word does a lot of what PageMaker can do, it’s not quite up to pixel-perfect layout.

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That’s what I figured, but I was hoping there was a magic bullet… Sounds like I need to migrate to a page layout program if I want it to align consistently (not to mention automatically).

Thanks for the confirmation. If anyone has good workarounds, let me know!

,
Erik

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1) Set line spacing for all text to Exact (and specify a suitable height) instead of the default Single – single line spacing changes with font size etc.
2) Insert a continuous section break at the end of the text. This will cause Word to balance the columns.

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Ah, okay, I’ll give this a shot. Sounds very promising.

Thanks!!!!

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I’ve done this a lot in the past. In addition to Hans’ excellent advice:
3) for a heading with a larger font size, set the line height for it to double (or even triple if necessary) the line height of the body text
4) also resize the height of inline graphics to a multiple of the line height
5) if you want extra white space then make sure that (line/graphics) height + space before + space after = exact multiple of line height of the body text

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