Section breaks create extra pages

I'm having huge problems with section breaks. In trying to keep page setup, the gutter specifically, on the right side of the first part of a document, I used section breaks to continue the style. Two things happen:

- continuous section breaks get randomly transformed to Section Brake (Odd Page)

- I get an extra, hidden page to the document, which shows up in printing and when saving as PDF

The latter part is especially problematic since I need to turn in my work as PDF first, and print it later. It also divides the table of contents, which is an issue for obvious reasons.

I looked over a lot of proposed solutions. So far, I tried making all the brakes continuous, but that produced the same results, and I've tried marking them and formatting them as hidden text in Draft view. None of this worked. Is there any way to get rid of those pages?

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Answer

John Korchok

The rippling section break change has been a problem in Word for as long as I've been using it. The symptom is a Section Break (Next Page) at the end of a document. If you delete it, the preceding Continuous break changes to become a Next Page break. As you delete them, the effect ripples toward the front of the document.

This should fix it:

Click in the section just after the Section Break (Next Page).
Choose Page Layout.
While holding down the ALT, press P, then SP. The Page Setup dialog opens to the Layout tab.
Change Section start: to Continuous. OK out.

Section breaks are an over-used feature in Word. They can cause lots of problems. You only need to use them for changing number of columns, switching page orientation, different margins or headers and footers and a handful of less common uses. If you're not doing one of the above, you should just be inserting Page Breaks.

The extra page may be related to this issue: Extra Page

Author of "OOXML Hacking - Unlocking Microsoft Office's Secrets", ebook now out
John Korchok, Production Manager
production@brandwares.com

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Section breaks create extra pages

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