On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 7:59 PM, E Johnson <iris.gates@gmail.com> wrote:

A text file containing 500 names would print on just the left-hand
side of who-knows how many pages. We need this in a word processor
doc, which we can make into columns, then print on only 2 or 3 sheets.
It's just for reference, so we know if we already have this file in
our directory.

So you want something similar to the terminal ls output, ie: filenames in columns?

You can do something like "ls | pr -6tT" which will generate a 6 column output w/ the filenames.

You can further tweak pr with other options.