Extra line break above table after column break

Select the paragraph mark at the top of the second column, format the font and apply Effects "Hidden". That should do it.

Notes:

• The paragraph mark only disappear once you stop showing paragraph and formatting marks. This is the same with any hidden content.
• If you save as XML and inspect the document, you will see that the column break is in a run and belongs to a paragraph, this is why a column break is always within a paragraph
• Unfortunately, column breaks within tables are ignored, therefore you really need to do what you did and split tables and put your column break between the 2 tables
• The ability to break a table, insert a column break and hide the paragraph mark at the top of the second column before the table is important in particular on the last page of a 2 column section followed by a Continuous break, this is one of the few ways you can control how Word re-balances the content at the end of a multi-column section.

That option unfortunately doesn't apply to column breaks. Instead of inserting a manual column break, use "Keep with next" formatting to force content into the next column.

OK, I see what you mean. What you can do is apply a style to the blank paragraph mark at the beginning of the column (after the break). Format the style as follows: font size 1 pt, line spacing exactly 1 pt, spacing before/after zero.

Alternatively, perhaps you could use a single newspaper column and make use of a three column table for all data instead?

What I had hoped to achieve (worked around using a 3x1 table to encapsulate the smaller tables): http://puu.sh/dpJPF.png

The steps I took:

 - Make 3 Excel tables (http://puu.sh/dpKeP.png)

 - Paste as RTF, add header row to each, minimize column width

 - Show formatting characters

 - Add column break before second and third tables to get them across the page (http://puu.sh/dpKHT.png)

 - For posterity's sake, let's remove the after spacing and set line spacing to 1.0 (http://puu.sh/dpKSq.png)

Note that there is a line break before the second and third tables despite the column break. Now, what happens if I delete the ¶s?

http://puu.sh/dpL4d.png

The tables are automatically merged and the column breaks just disappear. I tried this for hours yesterday and am sure that I have only highlighted the ¶ and not the column break. It seems to me that Word uses the ¶ to define the end of the table, but this has the side effect of putting a text line in between them. Column breaks apparently aren't programmed to perform the same function.

Same issue here, confirmed to be an actual line break.