You tell us that your firm will not permit use of styles in documents.
Telling you to use Word for legal documents without using styles is the equivalent of hiring a chauffeur for your Rolls Royce and telling him to not have any oil changes and only use 25 gallons of gasoline a month. Put a governor on the engine limiting the speed to 45 miles per hour. Then complain that the car does not do what you want; it won't get you where you want to go.
You started out asking how to change headers in lengthy legal documents and the problems you were having adding Section breaks.
Headers (and footers) in a lengthy document really need the
StyleRef Field for most of the changes you want, with no need for Section breaks.
In addition to the StyleRef field, styles are very much involved in the following:
Someone in your firm had a bad experience with styles I would guess. Probably after being forced to move to Word from Word Perfect (where styles are not nearly as important). They need to move past that.
From my page on
the Importance of Styles in Word:
Quote:
Trying to use Word without understanding and using styles is like pushing on a string. I resisted learning and using styles for years and now regret every day of those years because although that string was still very hard to push, it kept getting longer and longer, and had some very important projects tied to it!
Once you understand styles and the Word concept of organizing things into nested Russian dolls everything falls into place and instead of pushing a string, you can push a button that turns on the very powerful text processing machine known as Microsoft Word and it will start doing your work for you instead of running around behind you trying to undo what you thought you just did.
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I taught word processing use for the Legal Economics Section of the American Bar Association and for the National Association of District Attorneys. I published in the Word Perfect for Lawyers newsletter. I am a volunteer moderator here and on the Microsoft Answers site. I am far from all-knowing, but I do know that trying to effectively and efficiently use Word without using styles is self-defeating and might even be classed as
wicked if you are preparing documents and templates for others to use.
Yes, this will require learning new skills. It is far from insurmountable. Legislators and courts keep changing the law, but we lawyers manage to keep up. You have a quite powerful computer program in Word, yes, in Word 2003. You, and others in your firm need to learn to use it.
Start with:
Those can be a resource for every user of Word in your firm.
Everything said above about Word 2003 is still applicable to all versions of Word since. Later references would help with the change to the user interface starting with Word 2007, but all of the principles apply.
Here is a link to my response in this thread in respect to Headers:
Headers and Footers in Word 2003 (menu versions)