Empty pages appearing in document after section breaks

[Kiwi_731]

Dear Experts

I am using Word 2002 SP3
on Win XP Pro SP2 Version 2002

I am creating a document template which currently has 3 sections.

Section 1 (for the cover page) is terminated by a Next Page section break
Section 2 (for the front matter) is likewise terminated by a next page
section break.
There is very little text in it, so it should just consist of 3 pages
For some reason, however, there is a blank page between sections 1 / 2 and
between 2 / 3. It shows up on Print Preview (and when printed), but not on
View > Print Layout.
I strongly suspect that the section breaks are implicated as, when I move
the cursor character by character from Section 1 to Section 2 the page number
jumps from 1 to 3; likewise for Section 2 / 3, when it jumps from 3 to 5.

All sections have “Different odd and even†and “Different first page†ticked
under the headers and footers section in Page Setup; also, Mirror margins is
selected under the multiple pages section.

Please can anyone shed any light on this?

Hopeful Kiwi

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Your "Next Page" break has been converted to an "Odd Page" break (if you
look at the section break indicator in Normal view, you'll see this). With
the insertion point in Section 2, go to the Layout tab of Page Setup and
change the section start type to "New page."

 

[Kiwi_731]

Your "Next Page" break has been converted to an "Odd Page" break (if you
look at the section break indicator in Normal view, you'll see this). With
the insertion point in Section 2, go to the Layout tab of Page Setup and
change the section start type to "New page."

--

Thanks for the quick response.

That’s the strange thing – the section breaks inform consistently that they
are next page section breaks!

When use File > Page Setup to change them to Continuous, all page breaks
disappear – as they should. As soon as I change them back to Next Page,
however, _two_ page breaks appear at each one!

Just to see what happened, I changed the first section break to “Even pageâ€
(which is what it would be anyway), whereupon _both_ the spurious page breaks
vanished!

So it’s working, but I still have the feeling something is going to pop out
and bite me.

A thought – I have amended the page numbering on the second page/section
footer to restart at one in lowercase roman numerals, just in case that
affects anything (I notice it has been warned against)

Just for background’s sake, I am trying to follow John McGhie’s instructions
to create a standard template for a technical manual as per
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart2.htm

Thanks for the help.

Hopeful Kiwi

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Note that if the second section begins with an odd number, Word will not let
you make it an even page and will treat your Next Page break as an Odd Page
break.

 

[Kiwi_731]

Aha – that’s it!

In other words, Word wants to enforce the rule that right-hand (odd) pages
always have odd page numbers and left hand pages always have even numbers?
Makes sense, though a message of some kind before it just went and did it
would have been helpful.

Thanks a lot for the help though Suzanne.

Regards

Hopeful Kiwi

 

[Kiwi_731]

Aha – that’s it!

In other words, Word wants to enforce the rule that right-hand (odd) pages
always have odd page numbers and left hand pages always have even numbers?
Makes sense, though a message of some kind before it just went and did it
would have been helpful.

Thanks a lot for the help though Suzanne.

Regards

Hopeful Kiwi

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I *think* this probably happens only if you use "Mirror margins" or
"Different odd and even" headers/footers, either of which is a signal to
Word that you intend to duplex the document. Things can get very funky, too,
if you use the NUMPAGES field, because Word counts the blank page it inserts
as the first page of the section (logically, since it follows the section
break). If you've restarted numbering at 1 in that section, and it has, say,
five pages, then you get numbers running from Page 1 of 6 to Page 5 of 6,
and *there's nothing you can do about it*!

 

[Kiwi_731]

Thanks, I'll bear it in mind.

BTW sorry for inadvertently posting twice last time. The website was
throwing "cannot find the file specified" messages at me, and I thought stuff
was just vanishing into the ether.

Never mind - this problem solved. I expect I shall be back though...

Many thanks
Hopeful Kiwi