From the course: InDesign 2024 Essential Training

Spanning and splitting paragraphs - InDesign Tutorial

From the course: InDesign 2024 Essential Training

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Spanning and splitting paragraphs

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- [Instructor] We looked at how to split text frames into multiple columns in an earlier chapter. For example, I can choose this text frame over here, go to the object menu and then choose text frame options. In here, I'll increase this to two columns and click okay. So great, now we have two columns, but this heading up at the top, that's supposed to go across the page. That is, I want those paragraphs to span across both of those columns. Now I could cut that paragraph out and put it into a different text frame, one that's only a single column wide, but there is a much easier way to do this. Let me show you, first, I'll place my cursor inside this frame and select these two paragraphs. Now up here in the control panel, I'm going to look for a feature called Span Columns. I don't see it up here because my screen isn't wide enough right now, but on your screen you might see it, but if like me, you don't see it, you can still get this feature by opening the control panel menu over here and then choosing Span Columns. When you choose Span Columns, up comes this dialog box and you can see you have several options in here, single, span, even split. I'll cover that in a minute, let's choose span. Now I can control how many columns I want to span. In this case, I only have a two column text frame, so it doesn't really matter which I choose. Let's just go ahead and click okay. You can see that now these two paragraphs span both columns in the frame and that looks great. Now, I should point out that this Span Columns feature only works in multi column text frames. If this were two different text frames that were threaded together, span columns would not work. Oh, this works in the middle of a frame too, like I'm going to select these three paragraphs. Now I'll go back to Span Columns and I'll turn that on. Now what happens here is not immediately obvious, so let me explain. The Span feature breaks your page into little zones. We have this zone at the top with these first two paragraphs. Then we've got another zone down here, which is these paragraphs, and those are in two columns because this is a two column text frame. Then we have a third zone down here, which are the paragraphs we just changed. And then finally we have a zone at the very bottom, which are in two columns again. So that's span columns, but what about that other option, split columns? Let's press option or alt page up once to go over to this page. And now I want to change this text frame. I'll click in there and zoom into 200%. Now this list looks fine, but it's not a very good use of space because the column is so wide. I wish I could split that list into two little mini columns. And of course you can that same feature. First, I'll select the paragraphs, head back to the control panel menu and choose span columns. This time, instead of spanning the column, I'm going to choose split column, and I'll choose two columns, when I click okay, you can see that InDesign actually creates a new little zone inside this text frame and it splits it up into two columns. You can't really see the column edges, but obviously the text is flowing from the left all the way down and then into the right. In the old days before we had this Span columns feature, you had to go through all kinds of crazy workarounds to span or split columns. Now it's just a quick menu item away.

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