PowerPoint 2007: How To Create Text Columns

Contributor Icon Contributed by shamanstears Date Icon January 5, 2007  
Tag Icon Tagged: Microsoft Powerpoint

PowerPoint now allows you to create text columns within a text box, letting you change a long list of text into two or more columns. To do this . . .


1. Select the desired text box.

2. Click the Home tab.

3. Go to the Paragraphs section.

4. Click the Columns button (next to the text alignment buttons).

5. Select either One, Two, Three, or More Columns.

To adjust the column spacing, click the Columns button and select More Columns. Change the value in the Spacing textbox and click OK.

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  • Tim
    For some reason two and three are grayed out. Any ideas why? Thanks.
  • suzan
    Did you select your text first?
  • Colin
    This is probably too late for Tim, but I found this page while trying to understand why I had no option to create more than 1 column in PowerPoint 2007. Here's what worked for me...

    1. I made the text box too small to fit text.
    2. I selected all text in text box.
    3. This caused the "Stop fitting text to placeholder" box to appear on the left of the text box.
    4. Use the drop-down arrow and the last option is "Split into 2 columns"

    Hope that helps someone.
  • Me
    Thanks, Colin. That helped me!
  • abalu71
    Thanks Buddy!!! This worked out excellent!!! Actually, I'm trying for this option for more than 24 hrs. Great!!!
  • Julian
    This did not work, I couldnt select two columns it was not active whatever I tried..
  • julian
    Wait, I think it might have something to do with the fact that you need to have enough text in the text box that it will actually fit into two columns - I did the two columns thing and nothing happened until I kept typing but it seemed to work for lists and nothing else.. I dunno, I'm meant to be doing it for some assignment and its driving me nuts lol
  • Ryan
    If you originally created your powerpoint file with office 2003, but are now using 2007, then the file will be operating in compatibility mode, which essentially means it won't allow you to do things that won't work if you want to open it in the old powerpoint again. Go to Save As and choose to save a new version of the file as a 2007 powerpoint file. That should make it so the column options aren't grayed out anymore. Hope that helps.
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