MS Office 101

Page Break Basics

Page break? What's that?

Are these questions you privately ask yourself when someone is busy talking in "computer jargon"?

Can you practically see the words flying right by you?

Well, reach out your hand and catch these two because today we're not only going to understand what the mysterious page break is but we're also going to learn to tame the beast!

To begin with, a page break is the point at which one page ends and another begins.

MS Word will automatically insert a page break (known as a soft break) when you fill a page with text, graphics, tables, etc...

These are good little beasts. They automatically adjust to fit your document during editing and basically take care of business.

But... there are times when you need to insert a page break manually. Maybe you're ending one section of a document and need to start the next on a new page—time for a page break?

Yes, it might be, but what do you do if your page is only half full? I hope you're not thinking that you'll hit the Enter key until Word puts you on the next page! What a nightmare that will create when you try to edit your document—definitely not a good choice.

Solution?

Yep—got one of those.

You can manually insert a page break (also known as a hard page break) in a couple of different ways.

One way is to use the Insert menu, Break choice. Then from the Break window select Page Break and click OK.

Another, more efficient method would be to use the key combination Ctrl + Enter.

Either way, use page breaks, not Enters when forcing a new page.

OK—so now that you know some of the jargon and the basics, stay tuned for some of the finer points of page breaks. Controlling the beast is up next.

Office Tip of the Day

Controls For MS Word Page Breaks

Along with the ability to manually insert page breaks, MS Word gives you a few ways to control the soft (or automatic) page breaks inserted by the program.

Page break controls can be reached via the Format menu, Paragraph choice.

You're looking to navigate to the Line and Page Break tab.

Your choices are found in the Pagination section at the top.

At this point I'm sure you can see your four choices—but what does it all mean?

(Oh no, not more computer jargon flying around the room!)

Never fear—this jargon can be easily translated and you too will be a master of the page break controls.

The first choice is the "Widow/Orphan control". When checked, this will prevent Word from leaving the first line of a paragraph (an orphan) at the bottom of a page or the last line of a paragraph (a widow) at the top of a new page.

Basically, Word will automatically move the first the first line of a paragraph to the next page (avoiding the orphan). If the last line of a paragraph is pushed to a new page then Word will also move the line above it—this avoids the widow situation.

The second choice is "keep lines together". This one, when selected, will prevent Word from inserting a page break anywhere within a selected paragraph.

On the right side you'll find the "keep with next" option. This choice will keep Word from separating the selected paragraph and the one immediately following it.

Finally, you have the "page break before" choice. Just as the name of the choice indicates, it tells Word to insert a page break before the selected paragraph.

Once you select the appropriate controls for your current situation click OK.

And there you have it—control for you page breaks put where it belongs—in your hands.

Is it time for a break yet?

~ April