Writer: how 2 columns on only one page?

Hello,
in a document of 12 pages I would like to make only the first page to have 2 columns.
I did it very long ago in MSWord but completely forgot about how.
Thanks for reading.
;JOOP!

1 Like

Have you looked at the answers here:

?

The best way I have found is create a first page style in the document.

  1. Open the “Styles and formatting” list for your document (press f11)
  2. Click on the “Page Styles” icon in the row of near the top (their names names appear as you pass the pointer over them). Click on the “First Page” style, then right click, and choose “modify” to open a panel of options.
  3. Click on the “Columns” tab to choose the options (width, spacing, etc) you want for your 2 column section. Click on the “Organiser” tab and set the “Next style” to “Default” (or any other style you are using for the rest of the document).
  4. This will set the whole text area of the page to 2 columns. You are likely to want a single column page heading which you can put in the “Headings” part of the page. So, in panel you opened with step 2 click on the “Header” tab and put a tick in the “Header on” box (but not the “same content” boxes
  5. Click on OK.
    You should now have 2 columns on the first page of your document and text inserted into this section should flow out of this into a single column for the rest of the document.

I hope this helps. If anyone knows a better way of doing the job or anything I have missed I hope they will tell us about it.

Sorry that does not work:
F11 is dead, Shift+F11 shows a different dialog.
I think I must declare the area of the (first) page to be a separate paragraph, i.o.t. change its characteristics.
I found already that setting page format affects the entire document: I found no way to limit the effect
to only a single page.
;JOOP!

I think I found a better solution:
Select the text to put in 2 columns, Insert Section, set column count …
Works for me.
;JOOP!

1 Like

Glad you have found a solution. But if f11 won’t work try clicking on “View”>”Styles and Formatting” to open the styles list (which you will surely need for other things). In the past the f11 shortcut was dodgy on my Windows 7 system, but it is now OK. I find inserting a 2 column section means that every time I edit the text, paragraph style etc I must shift text manually in and out of the section to keep the 2 columns filling the first page, but this is probably a trifling point.