I place a section of my document in columns. I save the document, but when I reopen it, the columns are gone.
The same happens with some formatting: underline words only. Save and open, it changes to underline the spaces between words.
In which file format do you save your work? If you’re using doc(x), try with odt.
Regarding the question in OPs answer post - which by the way isn’t an answer to the original question and thus misplaced - please read this article about various formats and their respective relations. The general advice is: Use native format .odt for any edits of the original version of your document and just use a separate export to alien formats like .doc or .docx for exchanging your document with third parties not being able to read the native format.
Saving in docx. I can’t use odt because most of my students can’t use it. I thought this was compatible with doc and docx. Is that not the case?
Please look at MS Office Word/Excel. And think about this: if MS Word (which most of your students almost guaranteed to use) can’t properly read ODT (which it is compatible with), it must be non-trivial (in fact, impossible) to be truly 100% compatible with a foreign document format for any office suite…
Okay. Thank you.
Keep in mind that, as a teacher, you can specify what they use for your class. Plenty of mine did. I’d tell them to go download a free copy of Libre Office. 