How to prevent page breaks in multilevel lists?

[dreamweaver8882004]

Hi all, my question is as follows: I am creating a multiple choice test with multiple level lists of the format (note: the multilevel list isn't showing up here; the alphabetic bullet points are indented in Word):

1. Question text etc etc.
a. Choice
b. Choice
c. Choice
d. Choice

My intent is that no question and its answers spans across two pages. In other words, there should be no page breaks within the "abcd" portion.

Is there a way to do this? When I go into the "Line Spacing Options" controls there are "Keep Lines Together" etc., but that doesn't seem to work. To begin with, all the boxes are "blued out". The problem is I'm getting:

1. Question text etc etc.
a. Choice
b. Choice
### PAGE BREAK ####
c. Choice
d. Choice



I only want page breaks before or after a complete question and its answers.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[macropod]

You can format the whole document with the 'keep together' paragraph format to prevent individual paragraphs from breaking. If your questions and answers are part of the same paragraph (i.e. you have manual line breaks separating them), that's all you'll need to do. If your questions and answers are not part of the same paragraph, you could format the whole document with the 'keep with next' paragraph format. Then, either remove that attribute from the last answer in each group or insert and empty paragraph without that attribute between the last answer in each group and the next question.

[dreamweaver8882004]

Thanks for the reply. I am using the Numbered List function in Word to create the list of multiple choice questions and their answers. It creates the 1, 2, 3,... as one level and a, b, c, d as a second level; the formatting is as indicated below with pilcrow symbols:

1. Question ¶
a. Answer1 ¶
b. Answer2 ¶
c. Answer3 ¶
d. Answer4 ¶
¶

If your questions and answers are not part of the same paragraph, you could format the whole document with the 'keep with next' paragraph format. Then, either remove that attribute from the last answer in each group or insert and empty paragraph without that attribute between the last answer in each group and the next question.

I tried "Keep with next" and nothing occurs. The checkboxes show up as "blue" and when I check them, and nothing happens, I re-open the menu and they show up as "blue" and no checkmarks as if I never tried that.

Edit: after checking this: http://www.wordbanter.com/showthread.php?t=32330 it appears the culprit is that there are paragraph breaks between the 1, a,b,c,d, and 2,a,b,c,d so Word has no idea what constitutes a "group" or not. The suggestion there was to remove the paragraph breaks between "groups" and manually change the a,b,c to "keep with next." But I would have to do that one at a time, which for a huge exam is impossible.

Fortunately there is a solution:
1. Highlight a question and its answers, eg 1, a,b,c,d.
2. Do not highlight the paragraph break between questions.
3. Select Styles > Select Text with Similar Formatting
4. "Keep with Next"

Voila! Thanks for the help!

[macropod]

I did say:

If your questions and answers are not part of the same paragraph, you could format the whole document with the 'keep with next' paragraph format. Then, either remove that attribute from the last answer in each group or insert and empty paragraph without that attribute between the last answer in each group and the next question.

Obviously, if you already have the empty paragraphs, it's pretty easy to use Find/Replace to change their formatting to delete the 'keep with next' attribute. Better still, you can delete the empty paragraphs at the same time and format the last answer in each group with a suitable 'after' spacing.

[dreamweaver8882004]

Yes indeed, thanks again for your help!