.....take a word document (landscape format) and put a colored stripe about 3 inches wide down the left side of the paper so it looks like the following:

I thought this would be easy, but could not find it- must have been thinking about powerpoint. Dashwood suggests using a picture, formatted tight against text.

Well, I found out how to do it, kinda in a roundabout way. I made my landscape word document with 2 columns (1 thin, 1 wide) and did my text. Then I went into Photoshop and created an 8.5x11 "page", made that into a landscape with the blue stripe and imported the graphic into the blue stripe. I printed the image, fed it back into the printer and printed the document on it. It worked well, although I am trying to find a better way of doing it entirely. But, for now at least it works.