tweaking

I am very familiar with Word and its automatic and manual page breaks.

What is absolutely frustrating me is that at the end of a chapter I need to put in a manual page break, so that no matter how the chapter gets edited, the next chapter will always begin on a new page, BUT if the last line of text is at the bottom of the page, Word insists on inserting an automatic page break, too. This leaves me with a blank page.

I don't want to remove my manual page break in case the chapter gets edited and gets longer.

I would appreciate help in resolving this.

macropod

Hi tweaking,

All you need to do is to format the first paragraph of each chapter with the 'page break before' attribute. Then you can do away with your manual page breaks. If it so happens that a chatpter ends on the last line of a page, that won't then cause a blank page to be created. If your first para for each chapter is in a unique Style (eg Heading 1), simply apply the 'page break before' attribute to that Style's paragraph format.

gistek

The blank page happens if there is a return between the last character of the last line and the hard page break.

As macropod mentioned, the best fix is to add "page break before" to the header style used for chapter names. (If you want the chapter name to appear a few lines down on the page, just up the "space before" number.

If you don't use a specific style for the chapter names you will need to make sure there aren't any returns between the end of the last paragraph and the page break.

tweaking

Thanks for the suggestion. It seemed reasonable, so I tried it, but for some reason, although I applied a Style (incl. the Page Break Before attribute) to the Chapter x (which is the first paragraph on the page), it didn't add any manual page breaks of its own, so it doesn't solve my problem.

The style doesn't have anything fancy in it (only font, size, bold, center), although I do have Keep with Next (which has never worked well for me anyway). I tried removing that from the style in case for some reason that was stymieing it, but that didn't help.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

gistek

Making sure there are no returns between the last paragraph and the page break will do it, then. By this I don't mean no blank lines, I mean no returns at all. The page break should begin immediately after the last punctuation mark.

Looks like this.-------Page Break-----

not like this.
-----Page Break-----

(the ---'s are actually dots, and there's a backward "P" at the end of each line, but those don't show up in plain text)

Word will add a return before and after the page break, so you have to manually delete the one before. Click the backward P button to see the formatting codes.

Keep with next only works if there aren't any blank lines between the paragraph so formatted and the next paragraph. If you want space between the Chapter No and first paragraph you have to increase the Space After in the chapter style.

macropod

Hi tweaking,

The 'page break before' attribute doesn't add a manual page break, as such, but it does force the paragraph concerned to start on an new page - and isn't that what you want? In effect, the 'page break before' attribute creates an automatic page break, on an 'as-required' basis.

tweaking

I appreciate your help. It worked (after I reapplied the style), which got removed when I deleted the return.

I guess I had had expected a manual (or hard) page break, and so when I saw the soft page break I thought the feature wasn't working!

Thanks.