Your quite right. It's really confusing! I'd never tried it out before. Lets
see if we can make it a bit clearer.

So you put 2 unbound text boxes in the Details section in your multi-column
report and name them ItemHeader and CarryingHeader , 1 above each field
which you want to label. You make their height .0007 and set their Can Grow
property to Yes and their Visible Property to Yes.
The code assumes that you want the word Item to appear in ItemHeader and
Price in CarryingHeader.
It assumes that you have a field called Item
(that's the Me![Item] bit)

This is what you'll see on the report's code page

Option Compare Database
Option Explicit

Dim dLastLeft As Double
Dim sItem As String
Private Sub Detail_Format(Cancel As Integer, FormatCount As Integer)

If Me.Left <> dLastLeft Then
          Me![ItemHeader] = "Item"
          Me![CarryingHeader] = "Price"
          dLastLeft = Me.Left
          sItem = Me![Item]
       Else
          If sItem = Me![Item] Then
             Me![ItemHeader] = "Item"
             Me![CarryingHeader] = "Price"
          Else
             Me![ItemHeader] = ""
             Me![CarryingHeader] = ""
          End If
       End If
   End Sub

You'll see that I haven't used the word Global at all but I've put the two
dims at the top of the code page (There should have been a line break
between Double and Global in the text) I've changed the field and label
names to fit my own db but let me know if that causes confusion
I couldn't tell you why it works but if the Dims for DLastLeft and sItem are
but *under* the Private Sub bit you get a header over every item.
Evi