LaTeX forum ⇒ Page Layout ⇒ switch from two-column to one-column page without pagebreak

[pkladisios]

I'm trying to find a way to switch a twocolumn article (\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}) temporarily to single column. The problem is that \onecolumn, \twocolumn page-break each time. The alternative of multicol is not acceptable since it allows only page-wide floats.

[Johannes_B]

This is a bit of a problem for LaTeX. You can place boxes like that only on the top of pages. Either bei using \twocolumn which is internally used for abstracts and the like; or you use a doublefloat in which you pack what you want/need.

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex)

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\blindtext
\twocolumn[\textcolor{red!60!black}\blindtext]
\begin{figure*}
	\textcolor{blue!50!black}\blindtext
\end{figure*}
\blindtext
\begin{table*}[bp]
	\textcolor{orange!50!black}\blindtext
\end{table*}
 
\noindent\parbox{\textwidth}{\textcolor{green!50!black}\blindtext}
 
\blindtext[4]
\end{document}

Look at the parbox with the green text. LaTeX cannot remember, that this place is already filled. Ask yourself a question: How would LaTeX decide if the first column above is typeset and then the other column above, the two at the bottom at the end. Or first column one top and bottom, and later column two top to bottom. How would the reader of a document decide which way to read?

Package stfloats extends the standard and allows floats at the bottom of pages.

[pkladisios]

This is really strange. There's a massive amount of scientific papers doing what i'm asking for. Just to be precise, i want, right after the title, to insert a few page-length lines of information about authors,keywords,contact info etc. I tried to suppressing pagebreak for a single command but later on page-length text is overwritten by the second column text:

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex)

\begingroup
\let\clearpage\relax 
\onecolumn 
\endgroup

I'll keep searching among various templates and perhaps will find a solution. Really frustrating though...

[Johannes_B]

I bet you are generating the title using \maketitle. Don't; the standard title is quite ugly anyway.

Put the title as well as the abstract and the keywords in the optional argument of twocolumn.

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex)

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\twocolumn[{\centering{\Huge Why is this all
	happening?\par}\vspace{3ex}
	{\Large Crazy Cabybara\par}\vspace{2ex}
	\today\par\vspace{4ex}}
{\centering\bfseries Abstract\par}
\smallbreak
\blindtext
\medbreak
Keywords: Ant, Bee, Penguin
\par\vspace{2ex}]
\blindtext[5]
\end{document}