I'm having a similar problem, and none of these fixes have worked. I'm using
Office XP.

I'm creating minutes, and what I want is a narrow column on the right for
initials so that people can see quickly any items that relate to them. I've
been doing this with a table, one row of two columns, which goes to two or
three pages. I start with three "normal" paras, not in the table, giving
apologies etc, across the whole width of the doc, and then have a the
two-column table. After I've entered enough paras into the table to fill page
one, the table then moves to the top of page two, leaving the rest of page
one blank. I've tried splitting the table into several rows, splitting the
table, and I've tried all the fixes that have been suggested.

Is there another way of getting the layout that I'd like?

TIA,
Dianne Reuby