Mac Forum / Applications / Word / October 2006

I'm always in page width mode, but rarely doing double column work. I
was able to reproduce something similar to your problem once or twice
in a brief 2 column test. Here the point at which the left column broke
to the right changed when I changed the zoom by dragging the page
wider. It seemed to go away when I deleted an unwanted empty paragraph
from the beginning of the sample. That reminded me of a mess I once had
with suppressing 'space before' on column break. I don't currently have
that set in the compatibility preferences, so it might be a
coincidence.

I'd learn to live with those little annoyances. Keep away from hard
column breaks. Use "keep with next" to encourage Word to do the right
thing and find a zoom setting that causes fewest surprises.

Word's on screen typography is rather poor, and its printed typography
is only marginally better. When it really matters, you have already
found the work around alternative to trusting Word's on-screen display.
Print Preview in the print dialog. I actually prefer a print to
postscript so I can examine the finished job in Apple's Preview.app.

On re-reading your original problem statement, it might be useful to
inspect your page footer for unwanted paragraph marks or other
irregularities.

I'd like to have a nice clear cut answer for you, but I get bitten by
the same mess on rare occasions.