This can be a pain; page and column breaks always inherit the style of the
following paragraph, so if you apply shading, they will pick it up. In the
case of page breaks, the solution is simple: if you use the "Page break
before" property instead of a manual page break, you don't get this effect.
Unfortunately, there is no "Column break before" property, so you'll have to
be devious: apply the "Keep with next" property to enough paragraphs to get
the column to break where you need it to.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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"Rachelle" wrote in message
...
Hi! I am trying to put a border and shading to a column but the blank
paragraph above gets shaded too. How can I apply the shading after the
column
break and not including it? Thanks.