I was writing a reply to Dalyoung, but Wolfgang beat me to it. So I'm going to ask a question myself: I'm a bit desperate about columns. I want nothing fancy, just a simple two-columns layout for a few pages. Unfortunately, the two betas I have on my computer both have trouble. 2012-06-30 complains about \column: "undefined control sequence." 2012-07-19 throws an error which I've never seen before: system > tex > error on line 901 in file reader.tex: Bad register code ... That's the line where I have \stopcolumns. The full error is this: \page_mul_flush_preceding_ongrid ...ceding_height -\dp \d_page_mul_preceding... \page_mul_flush_packaged_columns_indeed ...ongrid \else \page_mul_flush_prec... \page_mul_flush_packaged_columns_continued ...eed \box \columnpagebox \egroup \page_mul_routine_continue ...d_columns_continued }\page_otr_construct_and_s... \page_otr_command_routine ...mul_routine_continue \or \page_mul_routine_bala... \page_otr_triggered_output_routine ...and_routine \fi What does this "bad register code" mean? I don't even know where to begin to look for an error - there is one \start - \stopcolumns environment earlier in my document, which does appear to work normally. Any pointers? Thomas