Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with columns

Tabs, pseudo-columns, and wrapping lines

largecorp — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:11:31 -0800

Name. Tab. Phone number. This creates two columns. One for name and one for phone number, except--when someone has a really long name that goes past the tab setting and impinges on the phone number area. Is there some sort of tab setting that will make that long name wrap around, creating a second line within its own name area? For the record, I know I could use a table to do exactly this, but I'm reformatting a huge amount of text that is already laid out with tabs. Any advice for this poor sap who accepted the job? The text is in an InDesign document, but I can copy it to a word processor or anything that would do the trick. Thanks!

Where to Buy Inexpensive Wood Columns?

mincus — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 08:48:35 -0800

My wife and I are looking to make our entertainment room look somewhat like an Opera house. Any ideas for procuring inexpensive-columns? The prices for new columns (along with the base and capital) made from wood or plastic seem to start at around $500 (and then go much much higher). This seems really high something relatively simple.

The columns won't be load bearing, they are merely for decoration. We've also done some antique store hunting to see if they had some old beat up columns, but no luck so far.

So do any green reading column experts have any ideas? Thanks!

How can I get Keynote to print slides in multiple columns?

4ster — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:00:26 -0800

How can I get Keynote '08 to print slides in more than one column? When I am printing, I have an option to print as a handout with an option of 2, 3, 4, 5, or six slides per page. However, Keynote only prints them in one column, with the size of the slide dependent upon the number of slides on the page.

What I am trying to do is print about 9 slides per page (3 rows x 3 columns) and have the slides themselves readable when printed in this configuration. Can this be done?

Columns vertically uneven in Indesign

deadcowdan — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:19:37 -0800

Typographers of the world, help me! How does one get lines of type to line up precisely in a two-column format? I've begun using Adobe Indesign, and have run into a problem that I can find little to no information on fixing. In my document, I have two columns of text per page, and the text autoflows from column to column to column. Sprinkled throughout the text are titles or headings. However, as you can see from the examples below, a title or heading appearing in a column will make the text below it vertically misaligned with the column next to it.

Good alignment (no headings)
Misalignment after a heading

What is the best way to tackle this problem so that text in the two columns is always aligned properly, without me having to go through and fix each instance through trial and error? This document is quite long, and I am making changes along the way, so fixing each place it happens is not really practical. What combination of leading and space-before- and space-after-paragraph numbers (or other settings I don't know about) will defeat this?

Making two columns work in MS Word shouldn't be this hard.

midatlanticwanderer — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 12:39:53 -0800

In Microsoft Word 2003, I'm trying to format a document so that there is both one-columned and two-columned text on the same page. Whenever I apply two columns to the text I want to be in two columns, it always shunts all that text to a new page, as if I had inserted a page break. What do to? When I click "Show/Hide" it says I've inserted a continuous section break. All the help files and everything I've consulted say that inserting a continuous section break should allow my text to flow nicely from one column to two all on the same page. However, when I actually do this, it never works and I always have the text in one column on the first page, with a lot of empty white space before the second page where the two columns start. I've talked to others who have had this problem so I know I must not be the only one! Any assistance is much appreciated!

Please help me move from tables to divs in a clear way?

Kickstart70 — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:17:27 -0800

How do I do multiple sets of multi-column divs w/ CSS inside other multi-column divs? More details in first comment. This issue has bugged me for a while, and I've usually resorted to table to get away from CSS columnar hideousness

Here's a graphic depiction of what I want to accomplish.

I've managed to make A, B, C, and the unlabelled footer happen with directions I've found using float (left and right, and clearing for the footer), but when I try to use the similar structure for D-H, it fails horribly.

What I eventually want to accomplish is that d-h could be a large (and not previously defined) number of entries, so any solution should take that into account.

Thanks!

Excel: moving data from multiple columns to a 2-column format

blag — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 05:00:24 -0800

Excel / VBA help needed: moving data from multiple columns to a 2-column format I've got an Excel worksheet which contains data in the following format:



Foo  1  3  7

Bar  3  5

Yay  1  5  11  17

And I need it in this format:



Foo  1

Foo  3

Foo  7

Bar  3

Bar  5

Yay  1

Yay  5

Yay  11

Yay  17

...where the contents of columns B:ZZ are moved to B1:B999 and the relevant title from column A is listed alongside each item. It's complicated by the fact that each title has a variable number of entries alongside it: some have as many as 30, some have none.

I know the 'transpose' command will convert the rows to columns but it's still not what I'm after. It may be the first step, though.

Is there an easy way to do this automagically or is it a VB task? If so, any VB geniuses out there?

Thanks

I just wanna hide!

phoenixc — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 12:57:00 -0800

I have an Excel worksheet populated with data from columns A through IS. I’d like to hide columns but I am getting the following error: “Cannot shift objects off sheet.” Why? The worksheet has tables of monthly data with summary columns providing the annual total and variances for about 10 years. I’d like to hide the monthly columns and show just the annual total for the first 4 years in my worksheet and am able to do so for the first 2 years (data from columns A-AH). But when I try to hide the data for anything beyond column AG, I get the error message, “Cannot shift objects off sheet.” I can’t even minimize the column width as a work-around—I get the same error message.

I tried closing the file and opening it again. I tried clearing all the data from the cells in the columns that appear empty to me at the end of my worksheet. Same message.

Why does Excel think I want to shift objects off the sheet? I just want to hide columns—the objects would still theoretically be on the sheet, non?

Is there a glaringly easy fix to my problem that I just can’t think of because staring at these columns and numbers for so long has addled my brain? Please help.

How to correctly export columnar labels from Word into Excel?

empyrean — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:23:15 -0800

A friend has a large list of address labels in column format which were created in Excel, then exported to Word. He no longer has the original Excel file. Now he needs the Word address labels exported back into Excel, maintaining the format structure of each cell containing a person's Name and Address.

Is this possible? How?

Reverse column order in Excel?

rexruff — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:02:55 -0800

Using MS Excel 2002 (Win), my mom has managed to reverse the order of the columns at the top of the page (Z to A instead of the usual). _Not_ the actual cell entries, but the columns themselves appear in reverse order. She has no idea how/when she did it. It's only new files that appear this way, not her old files, so I'm assuming she has somehow changed a default setting. Searching the Help options and three Excel forums has brought me nothing. Anybody?

Thanks,
s.

Question number 10297

tomharpel — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 16:42:09 -0800

Occassionally found on the sidewalks of Seattle, and probably other cities, steel blue columns stand about three feet tall, bolted down to the concrete. About seven inches in diameter, they are topped with a cap one foot tall with a door in the side. A padlock keeps the door shut. What are these things?