If the "sidenotes" are relatively brief, you might see
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/MarginalText.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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"Joseph Johnson" Joseph wrote in message
...
I am writing a long text document in Word 2000 (200+ pages). I want this
in
two columns. One for the main narrative and the second for sidenotes
relating
to the main narrative. At present I am using a Table of two columns with a
row for each paragraph. This method works but runs into formatting
difficulties which creates a lot of manual work. In particular, I allow
rows
to break over a page but then the widow and orphan options no longer seem
to
work, which means endless manual adjustments to avoid them. The newspaper
column appproach is no good because that aims to zig zag text up and down
the
columns on a page. The text box approach is very tedious for such a long
document. Are there any other solutions?