MultiColumn Reports

There doesn't seem to be a good way to create a two column report in Report Server for SQL Server 2005.  I am trying to create a two column directory report in alphabetical order.  If a particular entry won't fit on one column, I need it to go to the next section without messing up the alphabetical order.  

The built-in two column functionality is unusable.  The "Keep group together" option doesn't work, and so groups of data are split between columns or even pages.  An even bigger problem is that the time that it takes to export the data into PDF or TIFF (the only two formats supported by this function) increases exponentially based on the amount of data returned in the report.  The only report that was even usable returned less than 50 rows; several reports timed out before they ever finished.  

One other option that I tried was to create two lists, which alternated visibility based on whether the rownumber was odd or even.  This seemed to work as long as every entry had the same number of data elements.  If this wasn't the case, for instance, if one column had null in the field where the other had data, one column would get ahead of the other, and they would no longer be in alphabetical order.  This method is incredibly data dependant, and therefore unreliable.  This also breaks down if the data has to be broken down into segments.  For instance, if people in different positions need to be listed in different sections, and the first person in that section has an odd rownumber, the alphabet is reversed.  It's even worse if there is only one person in a group; the spacing is wrong.

Has anyone thought of a better way to do this?