I understand fully what you are trying to do. You can always start a new text area under the illustration and then align it to the adjacent column and even link it to the previous column. It would be helpful to have this be automatic align to baseline when you insert a graphic or even a space after a paragraph that is more than a normal paragraph space. Sadly, many of these text formatting features, which I remember back with Aldus Pagemaker, are unfamiliar to the R&D team. Xara would do well to have a former typesetter or magazine and book designer give them guidelines on how to implement these features.