I am wondering if you can help with an issue I can't seem to resolve. In a book I am formatting, there is a "mystery page" that seems to be the product of section breaks, or something. There is an "acknowledgements" page, which is page 11, then a blank page which is page 12 (it is there because new section need to begin on an odd page [right side of book]), then the first page of the "preface" which needs to start on an odd page (it should be page 13, but shows as 14, and there is no displayed page 13, the document simply jumps from 12 to 14). For whatever reason, this problem only appears here. At other places in the document where blank pages are inserted to allow for a section to begin on an odd page, I do not have this problem. I have tried deleting section breaks, and reconstructing the document, and a bunch of other things, but can not seem to eliminate this mystery page issue.

Sounds like an "Even page Section break." You could change it to an "Odd page Section break" or a "Next page Section break."
Sections / Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2007-2013

Thanks for the reply. I have spent hours trying various combinations, changes, section-break types - including the ones you specified - to no avail. It is the weirdest thing!

If you want to send it to me, I'll take a look at it. You can find my email address at the bottom of the following web page: Normal Template in Microsoft Word - How to Open

In any email, please provide a link to this thread as well.

Just emailed it to you. Thanks Charles.

Are you trying to add a blank page between the acknowledgements and the preface? You want the preface to start on an odd page? Just confirming.

For reasons I cannot fathom, if I add an even-page section break between the two, the Preface starts on Page 13. However, then the page numbering for the Preface is messed up.

I notice that the entire document is in the normal style. You are doing a lot of extra work! While I'm looking more, I would suggest (strongly) that you peruse
Why use Microsoft Word’s built-in heading styles? and How to create a table of contents in Microsoft Word. Then possibly Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word.

And then, look at Basic concepts of Microsoft Word: An introduction. You are using the Enter key to space things. You do NOT want to do this.

At any time during the preparation of this document did someone by chance use the Master Documents "Feature?"
Or, was any part of it scanned and copied?

BTW, the layout in the book looks very nice. My questions and suggestions are because it is not using tools build into Word to help with things. Not using Styles when using Word is like trying to push a string (not a ball of string, a string).

Thanks Charles!

In response to your questions:

Are you trying to add a blank page between the acknowledgements and the preface? Yes.

You want the preface to start on an odd page? Yes. Every section is to begin on an odd-numbered page (the right side of the book).

At any time during the preparation of this document did someone by chance use the Master Documents "Feature?". I will ask the others, I simply formatted it after it had all been typed up.

Or, was any part of it scanned and copied? I believe the answer is no, but, same as above, I will ask.

Regarding the other sound suggestions, while it may end up being that we have to "start from scratch", in a sense, we are hoping that something can be done with the existing document as we were on a timeline that has since passed.

Thanks so much for your assistance!

What I did was create a new document with the same page size and margins. Note, you may want to apply a gutter in your page margins.


Then I copied each section, without the section mark, into the new document. Creating a new section in those.

Note, what I sent is just the start of the document, not the entire thing.


See Working with Sections (or Why Word appears to behave so illogically when you delete or move a section break or How to preserve section formatting when pasting between documents) by Dave Rado, MVP