Although your sample doc doesn't show your issue, I'm 95% sure the problem is coming about because your doc probably has vertical justification turned on with the section in your source doc (but not in the file you posted). If you go to the Page Setup dialog, Layout tab - what is the Vertical Alignment setting set to?

What you are calling 'forced return' is generally called a 'soft return' or a 'line break'. It is completely pointless in this sample because you didn't indent the first line of that paragraph (SMILE) anyway.

I would highly recommend you spend a little time to learn about styles because they are enormously useful and will completely change the way you deal with formatting issues.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

The Vertical Alignment is set to the default "Top" in the master document and the excerpt document. (I wasn't aware this setting existed.) Should it be something else? Could that affect just the one paragraph in 274 pages?

Re soft returns and indents: The document is set to automatically indent all new paragraphs. I only know two ways to suppress an indention: Use a "soft return" instead of a paragraph return ("hard return"?) just above any paragraph that you do not want indented (in this case "SMILE" and the 1st paragraph in the chapter). Or do it manually using the ruler function--but that seems the long way around.

Attached Images

Vertical_Alignment.jpg (54.7 KB, 23 views)