Hi all,



I am using heading styles that have some "before spacing" set within the style (for instance, a triple space before a heading or a table title). I would like to suppress this spacing when the heading or table title falls at the top of a page to ensure an even top margin width (this is not only common in final manuscripts but often required in my line of work).

I have researched this, and the most detailed article I was able to find seems to indicate that this is not possible.

I see in the article that page breaks would suppress the spacing, but I have to use section breaks because I need the page numbers to reflect correctly in a table of contents linked to the headings (page breaks do not achieve this, at least not consistently).

Having said all of that, I have noticed that, for a reason I have yet to figure out, Word still does sometimes suppress the before spacing after a section break, so I'm clinging to the hope that it is possible to do this consistently.

As mentioned in the linked article above, The advanced option to suppress line spacing at the top of the page does not achieve what I'm referring to in this post. Any ideas on how to suppress the space?

Also, just in case it is confusing why this issue would come up, here are a couple of examples:

1. A table title at a beginning of a page

2. A subheading that follows a table that was too large to fit within the text and had to be set on its own page (so text, then section break with table on its own page, then section break, then subhead at top of page).

You cannot use the same style to perform two separate functions. You could create separate style(s) to use for when the typical heading function is not desired.

Here are some references (offered in other post by Charles Kenyon) that will further help you:

Basic Concepts of Microsoft Word - from Shauna Kelly
Tips for Understanding Styles in Word by Shauna Kelly
Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word
Basic Formatting in Microsoft Word

Hope this helps...

Thank you for the response and resources Jim.

I am familiar with styles...I was just hoping that Word had some way to do this that I hadn't come across. For instance, in some cases I have seen the extra space before my table title style automatically suppressed at the top of a page, but I haven't been able to pin down why it happens sometimes or, therefore, to intentionally replicate it.

Maybe the next version of Word will build an option into the styles to achieve this effect given that it is such a common need in final manuscripts.