Problem with blended headings Word 2007

[Stephski]

We have a document with Styles: Heading 2, Heading 3 and Heading 4 that have color blocks/shading around them and the double-line style border at the top and bottom of the paragraph. These styles work great when the headings are alone, but when they are adjacent to each other in the document, the borders disappear between the styles.

We have manually dealt with this by adding "false spacing" (hard return) between them and reducing the font size of that space to 2, however, we would rather have this be automated for the usual reasons.

Adding "Before" and "After" spacing to the paragraph style does not help either.

I have attached 2 pics. One is how we want it to look; the second is how it looks if you delete the manual returns.

Any thoughts on how to modify the styles so that they do not blend when the manual return is deleted?

[macropod]

Simply select a couple of the consecutive paragraphs, then use the boders tool to apply an internal border (click on Borders & Shading>Borders, then the middle of the three buttons on the Preview panel). Having done that, select each paragraph in turn, then update the Style to match the selection. You might want to specify a different internal border format than what you're using for the outside borders.

[Stephski]

FANTASTIC! That worked great. Why didn't I think of that? Thanks so much! I wish I was in Australia where December means summer!