column-span

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2020.

The column-span CSS property makes it possible for an element to span across all columns when its value is set to all.

Try it

column-span: none;

column-span: all;

<section id="default-example">
  <div class="multicol-element">
    <p>
      London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in
      Lincoln's Inn Hall.
    </p>
    <div id="example-element">Spanner?</div>
    <p>
      Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters
      had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be
      wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an
      elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
    </p>
  </div>
</section>

.multicol-element {
  width: 100%;
  text-align: left;
  column-count: 3;
}

.multicol-element p {
  margin: 0;
}

#example-element {
  background-color: rebeccapurple;
  padding: 10px;
  color: #fff;
}

An element that spans more than one column is called a spanning element.

Syntax

css
/* Keyword values */
column-span: none;
column-span: all;

/* Global values */
column-span: inherit;
column-span: initial;
column-span: revert;
column-span: revert-layer;
column-span: unset;

The column-span property is specified as one of the keyword values listed below.

Values

none

The element does not span multiple columns.

all

The element spans across all columns. Content in the normal flow that appears before the element is automatically balanced across all columns before the element appears. The element establishes a new block formatting context.

Formal definition

Initial valuenone
Applies toin-flow block-level elements
Inheritedno
Computed valueas specified
Animation typediscrete

Formal syntax

column-span = 
  none             |
  <integer [1,∞]>  |
  all              |
  auto

Examples

Making a heading span columns

In this example, the heading is made to span across all the columns of the article.

HTML

html
<article>
  <h2>Header spanning all of the columns</h2>
  <p>
    The h2 should span all the columns. The rest of the text should be
    distributed among the columns.
  </p>
  <p>
    This is a bunch of text split into three columns using the CSS `columns`
    property. The text is equally distributed over the columns.
  </p>
  <p>
    This is a bunch of text split into three columns using the CSS `columns`
    property. The text is equally distributed over the columns.
  </p>
  <p>
    This is a bunch of text split into three columns using the CSS `columns`
    property. The text is equally distributed over the columns.
  </p>
  <p>
    This is a bunch of text split into three columns using the CSS `columns`
    property. The text is equally distributed over the columns.
  </p>
</article>

CSS

css
article {
  columns: 3;
}

h2 {
  column-span: all;
}

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Multi-column Layout Module Level 1
# column-span

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser with JavaScript enabled. Enable JavaScript to view data.

See also