Hi ctc,
What versions of
Pages (Pages menu > About Pages)
and
OS X/macOS (Apple menu > About this Mac)
are you using?
Using Pages 5.6.2 in OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan, I did the following:
Opened a new blank word-processing document.
Pasted in ten 'paragraphs' of dummy text, matching the default style set for the document.
Pasted a second copy of the text to have text to a second page.
Selected paragraphs 3 to 8.
Clicked the Format Brush, and chose Text, then chose Layout.
Changed the columns setting from 1 to 2.
Results shown below:
Regards,
Barry