I have a document formatted in two colums, with chapter headers spanning across page in one column. I thus need continuous section breaks before and after each header.



Two things don't work properly:
a) the paragraph "Keep with next" option does not work acros continuous section breaks.. Headers end up often at the bottom of the page, separated from the text on the next page. The only way I found is to add a manual page break before these headers.

b) the paragraph "spacing before" is applied at the beginning of the section, but at the top of the next column.

Is the a way around this, specially the former. The document is an evolving document as I regularly add or delete text and I have to go through the document every time to manually add or delete page breaks as the text lengh changes.

Thanks.

Could you attach a sample document with the problem so that we do not have to try to reproduce this in order to solve it?


Attach a Sample File Demonstrating the Problem - Here's How

I created a short version of the document by :
a) saving the original under a new name and deleting most of the text.
b) I replaced the text vith the Lorem Ipsum text generator and replaced the images with word stock images to anonymiaed it, but other wise it is identical to the riginal with all the styles, etc.

I could not reproduce the problem until I added the small tables below "Heading 3".
Heading 1, 2 & 3 and the style for the all table rows except the last have all the "keep with next" option checked; the rest of the text is allowed to position istself automatically.

In its current form, heading 2 at the bottom of page 3 is orphaned does not move at the top of page 4 (the text is bilingual, that is why there are two consecutive headings 1 and 2).

Thanks

Attached Files

Test document.docx (130.4 KB, 5 views)

Keep with next will never adhere across a section break, continuous or new page.

The bullet text is not keep with next (and should not be).

You can use the formatting of Page Break before, either as direct formatting or as part of the style definition.

See Improving the Bottom Line by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP which deals with problematic page breaks.

Thanks for the info. It is what I was afraid of and I was looking for a get around. I know I can put a skip to next page in the style definitions, but as the document constantly évolves, I have to readjust every time I make a change.

You could add a frame to the page width heading styles to achieve this. You will need to add a column break before the heading to ensure that the text wraps correctly.

See attached example

Attached Files

Test document - framed.docx (278.1 KB, 2 views)

Creating Frames in Word

Italophile
I also experimented with framing the heading styles but didn't find a clean workable solution. I had a play with your example and it has the same issues.
1. A column break preceding the heading won't flow/balance the two columns if there is one filled column on the preceding page. To get that content to flow into the top half of the page you will need to use continuous section break in front of the heading.
2. The frame (and its anchor paragraph) pagination settings for 'Keep with Next' still don't work.

I do think that framing the headings is the cleanest way of doing this but it won't solve the pagination settings question the OP had. Using a frame allows the Word doc to halve the number of section breaks and avoid having to change the column settings for each section but they will still need to paginate by working out which section breaks need to be Continuous and which ones need to be New Page.

__________________
Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

As a side note your document is incorrectly setup.

The default font for your document is 10pt Times New Roman, but Normal is set to 9pt Arial, and your other styles seem to use Aptos. You need to make this consistent.

It is essential for a properly functioning document that the Normal style is identical to the document defaults.

Attached Images

	Screenshot 2024-05-01 102239.png (22.2 KB, 12 views)
	Screenshot 2024-05-01 102319.png (25.3 KB, 10 views)

Thanks for the info.

I changed the font recently (Aptos is very easy to read) and I forgot to chage the normal style.
I have been using Word for over 30 yrs and never realized that there was a default setting for the doc styles!

I will try framing the two main headings. I have not used frames in a while, but I suspect that they are similar the pictures.

It was introduced with Office 2007.

There were a couple of articles about it on Microsoft site, now long gone and probably not much read. Thankfully they can still be found using the Wayback Machine.

BEHIND THE CURTAIN: STYLES’ ORDER OF OPERATIONS
Word Blog - BEHIND THE CURTAIN: STYLES’ ORDER OF OPERATIONS

BEHIND THE CURTAIN: STYLES, DOC DEFAULTS, STYLE SETS, AND THEMES
Microsoft Word - BEHIND THE CURTAIN: STYLES, DOC DEFAULTS, STYLE SETS, AND THEMES

See also:

• [Quick] Style Sets and Word Themes in Microsoft Word
• Change Default Settings by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP