Flow text with varying columns

[correr82168526]

I have text that needs to flow over 100s of pages for a text book. Some of the text is divided into two columns with the second column containg a translation of the first column. Then there are sections without translation that is in one column. How to flow the text is complex especially when the first column flow onto the next page. Is there a way to do this without doing it manually.

[Migintosh]

Two columns and one column wouldn't be too hard. Just set all of the text frames to two column, make a body text style for the single-language that spans both columns, and a copy of the style for the two-language that doesn't. The trick is that you probably want the second language to be set beside the first language, which might be tricky if it goes longer than what fits on a page. That's because the part of the first language that doesn't fit in the first column would flow to the second, rather than to the next page. For that, you would want two single-column text frames on those pages. And this all gets more complicated if the amount of text changes which page it flows into (delete or add some text, and now your single-language text can't flow across columns, because it's flown into a page with two single-column frames, if you see what I mean).

There's probably a good answer, but it seems like doing it manually might be what ends up working. You'll probably get better answers than this, so keep an eye on this thread for a while.

[correr82168526 · Accepted solution]

Thanks. What I did in the end was run the text in two flows. One for the English in the left hand column and anchored the translated text to that on the right hand column. It semi works with just a bit of manual adjusting here and there.