Continuous break changing to Page Break- NO FOOTNOTES

[Julia]

Hello all- sorry for the long-winded explanation!

I am formatting a document (a legal pleading) for a client that is going
to be populated via mail merge from a third party program. The way the
program works is we use a Word macro to call a "standard" document which only
contains an "INCLUDETEXT" statement. The "INCLUDETEXT" contains one merge
code. The merge code contains a variable gets populated with the name of a
specific document to be merged (passed to it from the 3rd party program). The
"INCLUDETEXT" inserts the requested document into the standard doc and the
macro merges that document with the data from a source document. Confused
yet? ;-) This approach allows us to use one macro to merge any number of
different documents.

The issue is this: the pleading I am working on is one column at the top,
then a section (created with a continuous break) containing two columns, a
column break to force specific data to be at the top of the right-hand
column, then another continuous break that takes the document back to one
column.

It looks like this:

xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx

xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx

xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx

My source document looks great. A manual merge from Word looks OK. However,
when the merge is run via the macro the second continuous section break is
mysteriously converted to a "section break (next page)". I have searched this
site for the answer to this one with no luck. The doc does not contain
footnotes, so that doesn't appear to be the problem.

Any suggestions?

TIA-
Julia

 

[Julia]

OK- I actually fixed this by putting a continuous break at the start and end
of the document (found this in the
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WorkWithSections.htm posted by Suzanne-
thanks Suzanne!).

HOWEVER- putting a section break continuous at the start of my document
causes the line numbering (which restarts each page) to start at line 2 on
the first page. HUH?

 

[Stefan Blom]

If this is a pleading template provided by Microsoft it is likely to make
use of a text box (anchored to the header) for the line numbering. When you
add the continuous break it occupies some space, pushing the following text
down (but obviously the text box is unaffected by this). What you can try is
selecting the section break and formatting it as 1 pt font size, 1 pt line
spacing, and zero spacing before/after.

 

[Julia]

Hi Stefan-
the original document did use a text box for the numbering, but I had to
delete this as the numbering did not come through the merge process at all.

I solved the numbering issue by deleting the numbering, inserting the
continuous section break at the top of the document, and then re-inserting
the numbering. Now, however, I get a section break new page at the END of my
text, followed by the section break continuous, resulting in TWO blank pages
at the end of my document.

Stranger and stranger.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Julia,

So this *is* Word's automatic line numbering? Take a look at the line
numbering options for the sections involved.

 

[Julia]

OK- I went back to square one, and the original document from my client.

As Stefan surmised, the line numbering was accomplished via a table in the
header that extended down the left side of the document. This was originally
getting wiped out in the merge process, so I had removed it and set up Word
line numbering instead. However, once I inserted continuous section breaks at
the beginning and end of my document, the table based line numbering was
preserved, so now it is back in. Whew.

NOW, however, the merge process does something weird. The continuous section
break at the end of the document is converted into a section break next page,
and an additional section break continuous is inserted as well. The end
result is two blank pages at the end of my beautifully formatted pleading.
Anyone have any bright ideas?

TIA-
Julia