nisus.com

Likely a simple fix: I'm trying to get 2 or 3 columns in my footer. On the left margin would be some text; on the right margin would be the page number.

I can't find how to do this. Any help?

Unfortunately, the column feature is not available for headers and footers. Which is a shame, but there is good news.

The way to do what you want is to use a table. In your footer, insert a one row, two or three column table. With it selected, you can turn off all the table grid lines. Then, put your left text in the left cell and your page number in the right cell.

This flows as expected onto following pages. I would suggest that while you have your entire table selected, make it "Fit to page" in the table menu so that the table stretches across your page. I think if you right justify the right cell, your page number will fit on the right margin line.

Handy note: to insert a tab inside the cell, use option-tab.

Hope that helps!

Excellent! Thank you.

One related question: By doing your solution, the upper/lower margins of the footer increase. The guide says to simply use your cursor to change the size of those margins, but clicking and holding does nothing. Am I missing something?

First, you have to click, hold and then drag. But you cannot shrink the footer so small it cuts off the content.

There are at least two, possibly three lines of blank text in the footer. The table occupies one of them, but the other line is still there, and still takes up space. This is probably the source of your margin increase, as the table is bigger than one line, so it shoves the other lines up and down.

Thus, I advise if you are using the table in the footer, is to select then entire footer before you put in the table, so select the blank lines, and then shrink the font size of those lines down to something ridiculous like 1 pt. Maybe shrink the line spacing too.

That will shrink the footer so that all it has to worry about is your table, not the extra stuff.

You can also monkey around with the settings in the margins palette; there is some header and footer specific stuff in there.

Very much appreciated. Thanks!!