Page Layout ⇒ \previouspage command?

[nlct]

It's just occurred to me that there's a much simpler solution:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{lipsum}% dummy text for sample document

\begin{document}

\twocolumn[\parbox{\textwidth}{\lipsum[1-2]}]

\lipsum[3-5]

\begin{table*}
  \centering
  A very wide table
  \caption{Sample table}
\end{table*}

\lipsum[6-8]

\end{document}

Regards
Nicola Talbot

[climatologist]

Brilliant, Nicola!

This was exactly the solution I needed.

I was still having some issues with words running beyond the width of the columns, but I even found a fix to that. Instead of your suggested \documentclass{article} I changed your code to \documentclass[twocolumn]{article}. Now everything is perfectly aligned--my floats do float, my colum-width and page-width figures and tables all work perfectly!

Thank you so much for your help!
Chad