Odd that Word won't let you specify space before in this context.




To get the space correct, I think you'll need to use section breaks, not the built-in page break before feature in Paragraphs. With a section break, you can specify the amount of space before. Alternatively, you could set up the doc with First Page Different and have the top margin of the first pages of each section be at around mid-page.

On a new page, Word ignores the Space-Before setting for the first paragraph and puts it at the top margin.

That's not the behaviour I'm seeing - a heading with a 300pt 'before' spacing and the 'page break before' option as part of its Style definition starts 300pt below the margin. If those attributes are not part of the Style definition and the heading is preceded by a manual page break, the 'before' spacing is liable to be reset to 0.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]