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I have a section in a Word document that is formatted to have three columns. I began adding phrases to this section, and they filled in the first column, then filled in the second column, and then finally filled in the third column, just as I wanted. When I deleted a phrase from anywhere in the list of values, all the values that followed it would re-flow to fill in the space, including that the topmost phrase in the third column would reposition itself at the bottom of the second column. All well and good.

The problem is that the value of the phrase at the top of the first column was long, so that very first value wrapped around to occupy two physical line positions. So far so good. However, the topmost value in the second column, which does not wrap around onto a second physical line, appears to be vertically aligned with the midpoint between the two physical lines of the first entry in the first column. A screen shot is provided.

Illustration of the problem

Notice how the phrase "Machine Learning" appears to align vertically with a point halfway between "Administrative Health Claims" and "Data" in the first column.

Because this set of three columns is not a Word table, I can't just select the contents of all three columns and tell Word to align them to the tops of their respective cells. But in searching the documentation on columns in Word, I haven't been able to find anything that tells how to align the cell contents in a multi-column section of the document all to the tops of the cells in which they reside.

Is there a way to do it?

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2 Answers 2

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Probably there is no way to do it in this way, but I think there is an acceptable workaround. Using three-column table is a bad idea, since when a phrase is to be removed there would be a gap hard to be fixed.

Instead in the three column section you can use one-column table with hidden borders and equal row height of every row (with proper after/before spacing). You can remove any middle item from this kind of table and it will fill space nicely. The problem will be, when any of the items is very long, but in your case it will be good enough, I think.

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    For extremely long content, merging two cells should work
    – cybernetic.nomad
    Mar 22, 2019 at 21:55
  • I'm not following your note that "when a phrase is to be removed there would be a gap hard to be fixed". I apologize that I didn't make it more clear, my fault. Actually, the reason that I chose to use a section with three columns instead of a table is because a deletion of a phrase anywhere in the section DOES cause all of the subsequent entries automatically to re-flow to fill in the spot where the deleted entry had been, even re-flowing around columns as may be necessary. Please see the following screen shot showing the region of the document that has three columns:
    – fireblood
    Mar 23, 2019 at 0:10
  • This note refers to using normal 3-column table, not to your solution. I know you do not use a table (for the reason I mentioned), this was just consideration of a possible (faulty) solution. The logic is: using three-column table is a bad idea BUT using one-column table (in three-column section) is a good idea.
    – endrju
    Mar 23, 2019 at 0:35
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You can resize the first columns length so that the long text that is causing problems fits in the column without alignment issues.

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