Footers and Headers Are Unwieldy.

[CrossReach]

Hi,



The footers and headers I find are unwieldy. When I click into one for example the text itself switches around. Once I click back out it goes back to normal. Sometimes different section headers are bigger than others. This affects the overall look of the document and leaves large white gaps one some pages, because the footer is so large and I don't know how to fix it. Any help is much appreciated. Thank you.

[Guessed]

In general, sections are heavily overused by many users. Each section can potentially have a different page setup and three header/footer combinations in it. Your screen shot shows Section 5 is using all three headers and footers so by the time you reach page 25 there are potentially 5x3=15 different headers and footers in play and 5 different page setups. No wonder you are finding it complicated.

To simplify your life, minimise the number of section breaks in your document and work out what NEEDS a section break and what can be done more simply by using a StyleRef field.

There are only a few times when a section break is unavoidable
1. Change page setup eg portrait pages followed by landscape pages
2. Restart the page numbering
3. Start a chapter on a right hand page or with special artwork in the header/footer on just that first page of the chapter.

[Charles Kenyon]

I agree that unneeded sections are often inserted.
Your screenshot shows you having a first-page footer as well as different even and odd footers. If they have dissimilar content, you can get such results. Dissimilar content can include different page-before and space-after formatting of an empty paragraph.

Header/Footer Settings Recap

[Charles Kenyon]

You can also have pages end at different points because of other settings. See: Improving the Bottom Line by Suzanne Barnhill.