From too many people cutting and pasting into a document, I have a next page break where there should be a continuous section break. When I try to delete it or replace it, it jumps to the continuous section break above it and this continues throughout the document until all of my formatting is screwed up and I have to redo the document formatting completely.



How can I delete or replace the Next Page Break without it affecting my other section breaks? I am working in Word 2010.

Thank you.

Sometimes with things like this I add a manual page break (or apply Next Page paragraph formatting) after the troublesome page breaks, then I can delete the breaks without rearranging what follows them.
Another option is to try the Replace dialog. Open the dialog (I use Ctrl + H), click More, then Special, and select Section Break. Or you can just type ^b in the Find What box. It may be best to replace with nothing, then once the troublesome section breaks are gone you can go back and format properly.

A next-page (new-page) break is a section break. When it is deleted, all of the section formatting from the following section will apply.
Sections / Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2007-2016

There is an option to add a manual page break (Ctrl + Enter, or Page Break on the Insert ribbon tab (Pages group). When I show formatting (Ctrl + Shift + 8, or the Paragraph icon in the Paragraph group on the Home tab) the manual page break is identified as a Page Break, while breaks inserted via the Breaks selection in the Page Setup group on the Page Layout tab are identified as section breaks. That is the distinction I was making when I suggested a manual page break. These breaks do not result in a new section, at least not in Word 2010 and earlier versions.

To the OP, are you showing the formatting marks? It may help identify the section breaks.

I rarely use manual page breaks in a finished document, but sometimes I use them temporarily when I have to fix a messy document, especially when it has graphics.

Deleting section breaks may be tricky in Word, because you lose section-level formatting (as you have noticed). See http://word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting...ngSectionBreak.

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

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