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Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
Suzanne S. Barnhill Suzanne S. Barnhill is offline
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Posts: 33,624
Default Page Layout in multi-column documents

Columns will be balanced if you insert a Continuous section break at the end
of the multi-column section.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

"moishy" wrote in message
...

I've posted a question on http://tinyurl.com/6mflczk but it has
seemingly come to a dead end (i.e. no response).

Here's the issue I'm dealing with, page layout in multi-column
documents, since Word is not a desktop publishing solution, it doesn't
have a built-in option to align all columns equally at the bottom, and
therefore I have to do it manually. I'm using a function to find the
difference in points between two columns, the trouble is it doesn't
always work, sometimes it will return a value of several hundred points
when there hardly is a difference at all.

I'm posting the function here; I would appreciate any help I can get in
solving the mystery, and or improve the function.

Please note:
a. Although I will appreciate any help including alternative
suggestions, I would prefer if I can get some help with the function I'm
currently using.
b. The function must work on a right-to-left format
document.
c. Speed is a very important factor, as I plan to use
the function to display the difference in a text box on a user form that
will get updated every time a change is made to one of the columns.


Code:
--------------------

Function ColumnDiff()

Dim i As Integer, iCounter As Integer, iPos As Long, iPosCol As Long
Dim iCol() As Currency, nCol As Integer
Dim myRange As Range, iViewType As Integer, bEnd As Boolean

Const MaxDiff = 0 ' difference (in points) for the function to ignore

If Selection.StoryType 1 Then MsgBox "Cursor not in main text!": Exit
Function
Set myRange = Selection.Range
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
iViewType = ActiveWindow.View.Type: ActiveWindow.View.Type = wdPrintView
iPos = -1
With Selection
.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
iCounter = iCounter + 1: StatusBar = iCounter
While iPos .Start
X2: iPos = .Start
If Dialogs(wdDialogFormatColumns).Columns = 1 Then GoTo X0
ReDim iCol(Dialogs(wdDialogFormatColumns).Columns + 1)
iPosCol = iPos: iPos = iPos - 1: nCol = 0
While iPos .Start
iPos = .Start
If Dialogs(wdDialogFormatColumns).Columns = 1 _
Or Dialogs(wdDialogFormatColumns).ColumnNo nCol _
Then GoTo X1
nCol = Dialogs(wdDialogFormatColumns).ColumnNo
iCol(nCol) = .Information(wdVerticalPositionRelativeToPage)
.GoToNext wdGoToLine
iCounter = iCounter + 1: StatusBar = iCounter
Wend
bEnd = True: iPos = ActiveDocument.StoryRanges(1).End
X1: For i = 1 To nCol ' iCol(0) = high peak
If iCol(0) iCol(i) Then iCol(0) = iCol(i)
Next i
iCol(nCol + 1) = iCol(0) ' iCol(nCol + 1) = low peak
For i = 1 To nCol
If iCol(nCol + 1) iCol(i) Then iCol(nCol + 1) = iCol(i)
Next i
If iCol(0) - iCol(nCol + 1) MaxDiff Then
.SetRange iPosCol, iPos
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
ColumnDiff = CCur(iCol(0) - iCol(i)) ' & "pt"
Exit Function
End If
If bEnd Then GoTo X3 Else GoTo X2
X0: .GoToNext wdGoToLine
iCounter = iCounter + 1: StatusBar = iCounter
Wend
End With
X3: myRange.Select
Application.ScreenUpdating = True: ActiveWindow.View.Type = iViewType
MsgBox "Done!"

End Function

--------------------


LIMITATIONS OF THE FUNCTION (NOT PROBLEMS!):
1. The function will only find the difference in the main text and not
in footnotes etc.
2. The function starts searching from the cursor location (or the end of
the selected text) till the end of the document.


RELATED QUESTION:
http://tinyurl.com/7ju2puy


At the above url Macropad MVP has suggested several alternatives, as
mentioned there either the macro was too slow or I was not able to get
it to work in right-to-left format.




--
moishy