Same page and multicols

Question

I use multicols at times for specific blocks in my thesis, which has a title, and a block of stuff similar to the following:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{multicol}

\newenvironment{mh}[1]{%
    \textbf{#1}%
    \begin{multicols}{2}%
}{%BODY
    \end{multicols}%
}

\begin{document}
    \begin{mh}{This is the title.}
        \lipsum[1]
    \end{mh}
\end{document}

I am getting an occurrence which is creating a page break between the title and the body, so I need to be able to instruct them to be on the same page. However the problem is, that using begin{samepage} ... \end{samepage} destroys the multicols environment, putting all the text in one column as per below:

 %NEED TO FORCE HEADING AND BLOCK ON SAME PAGE
 \begin{samepage}
    \begin{mh}{This is the title.}
         \lipsum[1]
    \end{mh}
\end{samepage}

Anyone know how to work this?

Answer 1

The simplest way: use the optional argument that the {multicols} environment has for exactly such purposes:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{multicol}

\newenvironment{mh}[1]{%
  \begin{multicols}{2}[\textbf{#1}]%
}{%BODY
 \end{multicols}%
}

\begin{document}

\vspace*{.89\textheight}% this page
% \vspace*{.90\textheight}% next page

\begin{mh}{This is the title.}
  \lipsum[1]
\end{mh}

\end{document}

Answer 2

You can use the needspace package to add a new page if there is not enough space for both the title and the content.

Note:

• It would be better to provide MWE that actually reproduces the problem (as the one below does if you comment out the \needspace{3\baselineskip}.

• The MWE below will keep three lines together on the page, otherwise will go to a new page. If you prefer to keep a few more lines with the section heading you can increase the factor 3 to a larger number.

Code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{needspace}

\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{multicol}

\newenvironment{mh}[1]{%
    \needspace{3\baselineskip}%
    \textbf{#1}%
    \begin{multicols}{2}%
}{%BODY
    \end{multicols}%
}

\begin{document}
    \lipsum[1-5]
    \begin{mh}{This is the title.}
        \lipsum[1]
    \end{mh}
\end{document}

Answer 3

You can use a minipage environment instead:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{multicol}

\newenvironment{mh}[1]{%
    \textbf{#1}%
    \begin{multicols}{2}%
}{%BODY
    \end{multicols}%
}

\begin{document}

 \begin{minipage}{\linewidth}
    \begin{mh}{This is the title.}
         \lipsum[1]
    \end{mh}
\end{minipage}

\end{document}