I have a book with 20 chapters. At the end of chapter 10 there is a "next page" section break, and on the next page, on the first line of chapter 11 there is a "continuous" section break. The problem that results from this is that the second page of chapter 11 is getting labelled as a new section and this ruins the "x of y" page numbering in chapter 11. But if I remove either the "next page" section break or the "continuous" section break, the chapter heading for chapter 11 along with the text which follows it gets sucked up and placed on the last page of chapter 10. So it is putting me between a rock and a hard place. I need to remove the extra section break to fix the "x of y" page numbering, but if I remove the extra section break it ruins the chapter formatting.

Change the setting of Different First Page for that new section.

• Header/Footer Settings Recap
• Page Numbers in Word 2007-2024 (365)
• Pagination Fields

Many thanks for your reply Charles. The pages you reference do not seem to speak to the problem I have described.

Yes, they do. It is difficult to tell you how to fix this without seeing the document. Without that, all I, or anyone, can do is to give you resources about how headers and footers and page numbers work. These are all connected with sections and section breaks. What gets carried over when you start a new section?

Try preparing an excerpt with the problem section break and posting it here.
Attach a Sample File Demonstrating the Problem - Here's How

When you delete section breaks, the section formatting flows backwards towards the top of the doc. So if your section breaks are right next to each other, deleting a section break flows the page setup backwards until it hits another section break.

If removing the extra break removes the page format you want then:
Swap the position of the section breaks BEFORE deleting the break you want to remove. Do this by selecting it and dragging it to the other side of the other break. Then remove the break you wanted to remove. You probably also then need to change the type to 'Next Page' to finish off the last step.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Hello Andrew,
Many thanks for taking the time to go through and understand my query. Your reply seemed like exactly what was needed, and I have been trying to implement it. Ultimately I did not get success, as I could not successfully drag the section break.

But I took a different route, which did solve the problem: I copied all the content of another chapter which was correctly formatted, then did a next page break at the end of chapter 11, created a new chapter following it, then copied all the content from page 11 and pasted it over the chapter I had just created, thus creating a new chapter 11. I then deleted the old, defective chapter 11 and everything is now working perfectly! It was perhaps the longer pathway, but did yield the needed result. Again, many thanks Andrew-- I will try your suggestion again the next time this happens.

You seem to have found the information you need. :-) Just one more word of advice for future reference: a section break stores the formatting of the preceding section. That is why deleting a break may produce results that you do not expect (regarding section type, header/footer content, etc.).

The details of what happens when you delete a break are summarized in the article https://wordmvp.com/FAQs/Formatting/...thSections.htm (but note that the detailed descriptions of how to find the various settings haven't been updated for the most recent versions of Word).

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

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