Paragraph Style that will force a column break after the third Paragraph return

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to find a workaround for tables only being read row-by-row instead of column by column, so I've been experimenting with using a text frame with a paragraph style that splits into 3 columns:

A|D|G

B|E|H

C|F|I

Every frame will have 9 entries and it is important that there are 3 "rows" and 3 columns. Everything works well until the text gets to be longer than the width of the column and wraps to the next line, forcing the text below it into the next column:

A|C|F

a|D|G

B|E|H

I was thinking that if I made the frame tall enough and only had the text go to the next column with a Column Break, then I'd have better control over the formatting. Does anyone know, perhaps with a GREP style, that this could be accomplished without having to place the column breaks by hand? I'm pretty lazy and don't want to do that!

Why not use a table? Because I need the items to appear in the ToC in their column order A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I, and the table would show them in the ToC as A|D|G|B|E|H|C|F|I

Thanks,

Chris