Footers

[CAL]

Hello everyone,

This is going to be a bit difficult to describe, but I'm hoping there is a
way to do this. I have a long agreement with exhibits. The agreement has one
type of footer, then there is a section break where the exhibits start and
those have a different footer. I am trying to figure out, if I need to delete
the exhibits and I delete the section break right before they begin, all the
footers in the agreement change to the footer that was being used for the
exhibit. Is there a way to not have the footer of the agreement change? Is
there a way to override the automatic change? This is on Word 2000. Thanks to
anyone who can be of help.

 

[Ed]

Hi CAL,

Footers (and headers) are part of Page Setup formatting. Page setup
formatting information is stored in section breaks. The section break that
controls the Page Setup formatting for a section comes at the end of the
section not at the beginning.

If a Word document has only one section it still has a section break (which
is hidden in the final paragraph mark).

If your document has two sections - agreement followed by exhibits - when
you delete the section break just before the exhibits you're actually
deleting the break that controls the headers and footers in the agreement
section. This section then becomes part of the exhibits section and uses its
headers and footers.

One way around the problem might be to leave the section break in place. But
maybe a better way (assuming you want to get rid of the whole exhibits
section) might be to go to the second section before you delete it, open the
Headers and Footers toolbar, click the "Link to previous" button and answer
Yes when prompted. Section two and section one should then both be using the
agreement footer and you can then delete the break at the end of the
agreement section.

It's worth noting that each section can have several types of header and
footer (one for all the section's pages, one for the first page only, one for
odd and one for even pages) and the "Link to previous" option actually means
"Link to the previous section's header or footer of the same type").

For some more info on headers and footers have a look at this link:

http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/HeaderFooter.htm

If you have any queries about this, I probably won't be able to help as I'm
unikely to be around for a while.

Hope this helps.

Regards.

Ed

 

[CAL]

Dear Ed:

Thank you for the input, it was definitely helpful in understanding why the
footers all change and it gave me some ideas on what to do.

One last question, is there any way to override it? If my boss wants to
delete all the exhibits, including that section break, is there any way for
the footers not to change besides linking them? Thanks again!

 

[Ed]

Hi CAL,

AFAIK, probably not.

If the problem is that the section break is a "Next page" section break and
your boss is deleting it to get rid of the blank page that's left at the end
of the document, possibly you could replace it with a continuous section
break followed by a page break.

Other than that it looks to me like a "training" issue.

If the problem is that your boss sometimes deletes the section break by
accident when deleting the exhibits then two things might help - a reminder
about he "Undo" feature in Word, and turning on the display of formatting
marks before deleting the exhibits.

Or I suppose you could write a macro to link the footers and "encourage"
your boss to use it. (Good luck)

I had a quick go at protecting the (continuous) section break. I've never
really used protection in Word documents and it looked to me that it might
not be an ideal way to go (but as I say, I don't really know).

Regards.

Ed

 

[Ed]

Hi again CAL,

For some more info about sections, check out this link:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WorkWithSections.htm

Cheers.

Ed