Troubleshoot page breaks and section breaks

Microsoft Office Word 2003

You might have done one of the following:
  • Inserted a manual page break. Switch to normal view, select the manual page break, and then press DELETE.

  • Set a pagination option. The following pagination options (Keep lines together, Keep with next, or Page break before) control where automatic page breaks occur.

    To remove the pagination formats from text, select the paragraph following the unwanted page break, click Paragraph on the Format menu, and then click the Line and Page Breaks tab. If necessary, clear the Keep lines together, Keep with next, and Page break before check boxes.

  • Inserted a section break. The Next page, Even page, or Odd page section break automatically breaks the page.

    To prevent a section break from breaking the page, click in the section immediately following the section break, and then click Page Setup on the File menu. Click the Layout tab, and then click Continuous in the Section start box.

  • Inserted a column break. A column break inserted in the last column of a page will act as a page break. Select the column break, and then press DELETE.

ShowI inserted a manual page break, but the new page doesn't print.

If you inadvertently format a manual page break as hidden text and then specify that hidden text is not printed, Microsoft Word ignores the manual page break. The new page won't display when viewed in Print Preview (File menu), and the new page won't print.

To remove the hidden text format, first make sure you can see the manual page break: switch to normal view, and, if necessary, turn on hidden text by clicking Show/Hide Paragraph mark Button image on the Standard toolbar. Then, select the page break, click Font on the Format menu, and clear the Hidden check box.

ShowI can't copy formatting from one section to another.

To copy section formatting (such as margin settings and newsletter-style columns), first switch to normal view. Then, select the section break at the end of the section with the formats you want to copy. Next, copy the section break to a new location; the text above the new section break takes on its formatting.

If you want to use the formatting of a particular section in other documents, you can store the section break as an AutoText entry and then quickly insert it when you want to duplicate the section formatting. Select the section break, point to AutoText on the Insert menu, and then click New.