Continuing overflowed text in a different div?

I came up with a small JS Script that might help you out. It’s far from perfect, but might give you a decent starting point. Essentially, it loops through your large text and looks for a scrollbar to appear. You may need to alter the calculations just a bit.

JSFiddle http://jsfiddle.net/Tt9sw/2/

JS

var currentCol = $('.col:first');
var text = currentCol.text();
currentCol.text('');
var wordArray=text.split(' ');

$.fn.hasOverflow = function() {
   var div= document.getElementById($(this).attr('id')); 
   return div.scrollHeight>div.clientHeight;
};

for(var x=0; x<wordArray.length; x++){
    var word= wordArray[x];
    currentCol.append(word+' ');
    if (currentCol.hasOverflow()){
        currentCol = currentCol.next('.col');
    }
}

HTML

<div class="col" id="col1">Lorem Ipsum ....... LONG TEXT .......</div>
<div class="col" id="col2"></div>
<div class="col" id="col3"></div>
<div class="col" id="col4"></div>
<div class="col" id="col5"></div>

CSS

.col{
   width:200px;
   float:left;
   height:200px;
   border:1px solid #999;
   overflow:auto;
   font-family:tahoma;
   font-size:9pt;
}

UPDATE

For this example, you must include the jQuery Libray in your scripts.

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.3/jquery.min.js"  type="text/javascript"></script>

PS – if you get to know jQuery, you will start to use it for everything. It greatly increases cross-browser compatibility and simplifies many common tasks.