How to prevent column break within an element?

Question

Consider the following HTML:

<div class='x'>
    <ul>
        <li>Number one</li>
        <li>Number two</li>
        <li>Number three</li>
        <li>Number four is a bit longer</li>
        <li>Number five</li>
    </ul>
</div>

and the following CSS:

.x {
    -moz-column-count: 3;
    column-count: 3;
    width: 30em;
}

As it stands, Firefox currently renders this similarly to the following:

• Number one    • Number three          bit longer
• Number two    • Number four is a    • Number five

Notice that the fourth item was split between the second and third column. How do I prevent that?

The desired rendering might look something more like:

• Number one    • Number four is a
• Number two      bit longer
• Number three  • Number five

or

• Number one    • Number three        • Number five
• Number two    • Number four is a
                  bit longer

Edit: The width is only specified to demonstrate the unwanted rendering. In the real case, of course there is no fixed width.

Answer 1

The correct way to do this is with the break-inside CSS property:

.x li {
    break-inside: avoid-column;
}

Unfortunately, as of October 2021, this is still not supported in Firefox but it is supported by every other major browser. With Chrome, I was able to use the above code, but I couldn't make anything work for Firefox (See Bug 549114).

The workaround you can do for Firefox if necessary is to wrap your non-breaking content in a table but that is a really, really terrible solution if you can avoid it.

UPDATE

According to the bug report mentioned above, Firefox 20+ supports page-break-inside: avoid as a mechanism for avoiding column breaks inside an element but the below code snippet demonstrates it still not working with lists:

.x {
    column-count: 3;
    width: 30em;
}

.x ul {
    margin: 0;
}

.x li {
    -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid;
    -moz-column-break-inside:avoid;
    -moz-page-break-inside:avoid;
    page-break-inside: avoid;
    break-inside: avoid-column;
}

<div class='x'>
    <ul>
        <li>Number one, one, one, one, one</li>
        <li>Number two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two</li>
        <li>Number three</li>
    </ul>
</div>

As others mention, you can do overflow: hidden or display: inline-block but this removes the bullets shown in the original question. Your solution will vary based on what your goals are.

UPDATE 2 Since Firefox does prevent breaking on display:table and display:inline-block a reliable but non-semantic solution would be to wrap each list item in its own list and apply the style rule there:

.x {
    -moz-column-count: 3;
    -webkit-column-count: 3;
    column-count: 3;
    width: 30em;
}

.x ul {
    margin: 0;
    page-break-inside: avoid;           /* Theoretically FF 20+ */
    break-inside: avoid-column;         /* Chrome, Safari, IE 11 */
    display:table;                      /* Actually FF 20+ */
}

<div class='x'>
    <ul>
        <li>Number one, one, one, one, one</li>
    </ul>
    <ul>
        <li>Number two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two</li>
    </ul>
    <ul>
        <li>Number three</li>
    </ul>
</div>

Answer 2

A possible workaround for Firefox is to set the CSS property "display" of the element you don't want to have a break inside to "table". I don't know if it works for the LI tag (you'll probably lose the list -item-style), but it works for the P tag.

Answer 3

Adding;

display: inline-block;

to the child elements will prevent them being split between columns.

Answer 4

Firefox now supports this:

page-break-inside: avoid;

This solves the problem of elements breaking across columns.

Answer 5

set following to the style of the element that you don't want to break:

overflow: hidden; /* fix for Firefox */
break-inside: avoid-column;
-webkit-column-break-inside: avoid;

Answer 6

The accepted answer is now two years old and things appear to have changed.

This article explains the use of the column-break-inside property. I can't say how or why this differs from break-inside, because only the latter appears to be documented in the W3 spec. However, the Chrome and Firefox support the following:

li {
    -webkit-column-break-inside:avoid;
       -moz-column-break-inside:avoid;
            column-break-inside:avoid;
}

Answer 7

Firefox 26 seems to require

page-break-inside: avoid;

And Chrome 32 needs

-webkit-column-break-inside:avoid;
   -moz-column-break-inside:avoid;
        column-break-inside:avoid;

Answer 8

I made an update of the actual answer.

This seems to be working on firefox and chrome: http://jsfiddle.net/gatsbimantico/QJeB7/1/embedded/result/

.x{
columns: 5em;
-webkit-columns: 5em; /* Safari and Chrome */
-moz-columns: 5em; /* Firefox */
}
.x li{
    float:left;
    break-inside: avoid-column;
    -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid;  /* Safari and Chrome */
}

Note: The float property seems to be the one making the block behaviour.

Answer 9

As of October 2014, break-inside still seems to be buggy in Firefox and IE 10-11. However, adding overflow: hidden to the element, along with the break-inside: avoid, seems to make it work in Firefox and IE 10-11. I am currently using:

overflow: hidden; /* Fix for firefox and IE 10-11  */
-webkit-column-break-inside: avoid; /* Chrome, Safari, Opera */
page-break-inside: avoid; /* Firefox */
break-inside: avoid; /* IE 10+ */
break-inside: avoid-column;

Answer 10

I just fixed some divs that were splitting onto the next column by adding

overflow: auto

to the child divs.

*Realized it only fixes it in Firefox!

Answer 11

This answer might only apply to certain circumstances; If you set a height to your elements, this will be obeyed by the column styling. There-by keeping anything that is contained within that height to a row.

I had a list, like the op, but it contained two elements, items and buttons to act upon those items. I treated it like a table <ul> - table, <li> - table-row, <div> - table-cell put the UL in a 4 column layout. The columns were sometimes being split between the item and it's buttons. The trick I used was to give the Div elements a line height to cover the buttons.

Answer 12

I had the same problem i think and found a solution in this:

-webkit-column-fill: auto; /* Chrome, Safari, Opera */
-moz-column-fill: auto; /* Firefox */
column-fill: auto;  

Working also in FF 38.0.5: http://jsfiddle.net/rkzj8qnv/

Answer 13

This works for me in 2015 :

li {
  -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid;
  /* Chrome, Safari, Opera */
  page-break-inside: avoid;
  /* Firefox */
  break-inside: avoid;
  /* IE 10+ */
}
.x {
  -moz-column-count: 3;
  column-count: 3;
  width: 30em;
}

<div class='x'>
  <ul>
    <li>Number one</li>
    <li>Number two</li>
    <li>Number three</li>
    <li>Number four is a bit longer</li>
    <li>Number five</li>
  </ul>
</div>

Answer 14

The following code works to prevent column breaks inside elements:

-webkit-column-break-inside: avoid;
-moz-column-break-inside: avoid;
-o-column-break-inside: avoid;
-ms-column-break-inside: avoid;
column-break-inside: avoid;

Answer 15

I faced same issue while using card-columns

i fixed it using

 display: inline-flex ;
 column-break-inside: avoid;
 width:100%;

Answer 16

<style>
ul li{display: table;}  
</style>

works perfectly

Answer 17

In 2019, having this works for me on Chrome, Firefox and Opera (after many other unsuccessful attempts):

.content {
    margin: 0;
    -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid;
    break-inside: avoid;
    break-inside: avoid-column;
}

li {
    -webkit-column-break-inside:avoid;
       -moz-column-break-inside:avoid;
            column-break-inside:avoid;
           break-inside: avoid-column;
             page-break-inside: avoid;
}

Answer 18

Try this:

-webkit-column-break-inside: avoid;
page-break-inside: avoid;
break-inside: avoid;
-webkit-column-break-inside: avoid-column;
page-break-inside: avoid-column;
break-inside: avoid-column;

...worked for me, might work for you.

Answer 19

Most of the propertis is showing invalid when I am going to apply such as

  page-break-inside: avoid-column;
  break-inside: avoid-column;
  -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid-column; 

and when I am checking is responsiveness it not working fine for me...

Anyone can provide me a solution for the same...