Need help with Word - page break problem.

[TNDemo]

I have a big document and it has some page breaks in it that I cannot get rid of. Some of them I can just backspace and it disappears but the others refuse to go away. How do I get rid of them?

[question everything]

1. Are these hard breaks that you entered, or automatic

that the program does? If the latter, perhaps changing the margins at the top and bottom can correct them.

[TNDemo]

5. I think the program did it.

The ones I entered had asterisks and went away with a backspace. These are like little squares. I need the margins to be what I programmed them to be so don't want to change them.

[MindPilot]

2. they might be section breaks, not page breaks

Do you know how to make it display all the formatting symbols?

[TNDemo]

4. No...

How do I do that?

[MindPilot]

14. There should be a button the tool bar

It's a paragraph symbol--kind of looks like a backward P. Click that and it will display all the formatting. You can then scroll through, find and hard page breaks or section breaks, highlight and delete them.

If the button is not there, go to tools, options, view and click the "show formatting" box. (I hope that's right, I'm doing it from memory)

[BlooInBloo]

3. Depending on what you're doing...

a) Widow/orphan control in options somewhere
b) Show graf/page breaks in options somewhere
c) Stop hitting ctrl-enter. :P

[Tesha]

6. Strange though it may seem, many things in Word can only be deleted...

...using the (forward) Delete key, and *NOT* the
backspace key.

Also, set the document to "Page View" and "Show
Formatting", at least while you're resolving this
problem.

Tesha

[MineralMan]

7. What version of Word?

[TNDemo]

10. Office 2007.

Running on Windows Vista if that is any help.

[MineralMan]

12. Get to Word's help feature and search for

troubleshooting page and section breaks. There is a nice step-by-step section on how to solve pagination problems. Without seeing the document in question, it's unclear what's causing your problem. You know how to get rid of manually placed page breaks, as you said, by backspacing.

It sounds like something's screwy with your paragraph settings so you're getting pagination where you don't want it. The help system will help you get through the problem.

It could be a number of things, frankly, so I can't tell you exactly how to fix it without seeing the document.

[Canuckistanian]

8. Check you lower margin and use widow/orphan control

Also check your section breaks. It should tell you on the bottom of the document which section you're on.

[ddeclue]

9. switch to draft view and turn on all the editing symbols so you can see and delete them properly.

[RebelOne]

15. Or switch to normal mode. That works best for me.

[TNDemo]

16. How do you change modes?

I obviously have a big learning curve here...

[truth2power]

11. Try this...

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA101091461033.aspx?pid=CL100636481033

Two demos here...I hope you're not on dial-up :o , but there's a text version, too.

[notadmblnd]

13. click on the page layout tab, then click on breaks

you will then be able to place your page breaks where you want them. There are several options there under breaks, that should be able to help you.

[CrispyQ]

17. I hate the new Office.

It still does the same stuff, but how you get there has changed. Also, it seems geared more toward mouse use than keyboard use. :grr: The responses above should help you with your page break issue, but here's a link to a site that has some nifty quick reference sheets for all sorts of software. I've found this very helpful.

http://www.customguide.com/quick_references.htm