Extra Paragraph Breaks appearing in Header and Footer

[Steven B]

Hello everyone,

Periodically, when adjusting the styles and formatting of a document,
or updating fields and even entering/exiting the Header and Footer
extra paragraph marks appear in the Header and Footer. I don't know
why this happens, but they accumulate to the point where the document
will end up with 3 or 4 extra lines in both the header and footer
which takes away a significant amount of working space in the primary
document.

Do any of you know why this happens and how I can prevent it? I am
using MSOffice 2003 SP3.

Thank you,

Steven

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I am aware of one cause: if you copy/paste content from one header/footer to
another, no matter how carefully you exclude the paragraph when copying and
include it when pasting, you will still get an extra, empty paragraph. I
find this extremely annoying and counterintuitive, but at least I am aware
of it because I always have nonprinting characters displayed. Those who
don't have that visual clue would likely be much more puzzled by why their
top margins are not uniform (as sometimes results from this anomaly).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Steven B]

Hi Suzanne,

I also keep the nonprinting characters visible, comes from fixing
documents for co-workers, however it isn't from a copy/paste. These
just randomly appear. I delete them, and later on they appear again if
I change a style. I notice it most often if I update a style that
automatically updates (particularly Normal) and that affects others.
I've disabled automatic updates to see if that resolves it.

Very frustrating.


S

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Are you actually getting extra paragraphs or just Spacing After? This could
be a result of updating the style on which your header/footer style is based
(Normal by default). By and large, I prefer not to have any styles update
automatically except the TOC styles.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

Hi Suzanne,

I also keep the nonprinting characters visible, comes from fixing
documents for co-workers, however it isn't from a copy/paste. These
just randomly appear. I delete them, and later on they appear again if
I change a style. I notice it most often if I update a style that
automatically updates (particularly Normal) and that affects others.
I've disabled automatic updates to see if that resolves it.

Very frustrating.


S

 

[Steven B]

Definitely extra paragraphs. I checked the header/footer style and
they are not set to automatically update. I'm trying to intentionally
recreate the problem so that I can figure out how/why it happens but
so far it seems random.