Hi Mike:
OK, Microsoft tightly defines the meaning of the word "Section" as they use
it in a Word document
The concept is very complex, one of the big
subjects those such as yourself who deal with Word at an advanced level have
to get hold of.
A "section" is "part" of a document, and does inherit all of its properties
from its containing document. However, and this is where things get
exciting, a section is an "object" within a document. Word is extremely
object-oriented. The concept of objects brings with it the concept of
inheritance and the creation of "hierarchies".
When created, a document contains a master section (Section {last}), which
inherits all of the properties of the document. Then the user may set some
of those properties: for example, the headers and footers.
The next section to be created (which will become Section 1) will inherit
those properties. However, the user may then choose to break the
inheritance and define properties within Section 1.
Let's say the user then adds a section break within Section 1. It will
create a new Section 1. The old section 1 will become Section 2. The master
section will now be Section 3. Section 1 will inherit the properties of
Section 2. Section 2 inherits everything from Section 3 except the headers
and footers.
If the user then adds a section break to Section 3, it will create a new
Section 3, and the master section will now be 4. The new Section 3 will
inherit all of the properties from Section 4.
If the user changes the headers in Section 3, the headers in Sections 3 and
4 will change. The headers in sections 1 and 2 will not.
Each section has up to three headers (First Page, Left, and Right) and three
Footers. Each of those headers and footers can be set to "Same as Previous"
or "Not Same As Previous". The default is "Same as Previous".
Much of the confusion occurs because "Same as Previous" and "Inheritance"
work the opposite way. Throughout Word the standard rule is that each
"object" is a "container". For example, paragraphs, tables, pictures, and
sections are objects.
Each object is divided from the rest of the document by a terminating
structure. The terminating structure for a paragraph is the paragraph mark,
for a section it's the section break.
The terminator contains all of the properties for the object. A paragraph
mark contains all of the style, font, and paragraph properties applied to
the text before it. A Section break contains all of the margins, headers
and footers for the section it ends.
The above way of working is a feature of the way Word and its binary file
structure are designed. Originally, the design was created because it is
very efficient, both in terms of computing power and file size. However, to
human beings, it's counter-intuitive. We have difficulty understanding a
situation where what happens depends upon what comes next, not upon what has
gone before.
So for Headers and Footers, Microsoft added code to reverse Word's native
behaviour with the "Same as Previous" button. The "Same as Previous" button
is not attached to the current section that you think you are working on:
the change it makes is to the properties of the section break BEFORE the one
you are in. When you click it, Same as Previous copies the header or footer
you are working on from the previous section break, overwrites that header
or footer in the current section, then sets the previous break to inherit
from the current one. You may have to read this more than once before it
settles as you what is really going on: I don't know about you, but it took
me a while to get hold of it
It's an "exception" that intentionally "breaks the rules". It was created
because people converting from WordPerfect simply could not get comfortable
with the concept of forward inheritance. They had spent years of their
working lives working with a product which inserted a code in the text at
the point from which it wanted the new formatting to "begin". They had huge
problems with this new-fangled Word, which inserted a terminator that not
only contained all of the formatting, but occurred at the point in the text
where you wanted that formatting to END.
With 20-20 hind-sight, maybe it would have been better if they had not
created this exception. If there was only one rule and it applied
everywhere, I guess we would all have been forced to learn the rule early
and would not be having problems now. Hind-sight is the most powerful
design tool there is: unfortunately, it leads to difficulties in the
production and distribution process...
The way Word is designed is fundamentally more powerful, more flexible, and
more computer-power and disk-space efficient than WordPerfect's design. You
will find this out if you ever try to take a single WordPerfect file beyond
about 160 pages: everything starts to get very, very s-l-o-w-w-w-w... Word
will hang in beyond 2,500 pages. It's a bit difficult to tell what the
actual limit is, because the Page Number counter runs out of digits at 9,999
-- but in a single document the practical limit is about 2,500 pages. Of
course you can join as many of these as you like to make a document whose
size is limited only by the size of your file server.
Hope this helps
Microsoft doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word section. A
section is a closed boundary that encloses items that can share
properties, etc. only amomgst themselves. However, Word creates
sections that at times allows some properties to be shared between
different sections. As a simple example, I am trying to make 1 section
with all 1" margins and a following section with all 0" margins. This
is what Word does (commands are enclosed in __) :
_____ page 1 _____________
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
_____ page 2 _____________
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margins
1" margin
_____ section break (continuous) for 1" margins _____________
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
_____ page 3 _____________
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
_____ page 4 _____________
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
0" margins
_____ section break (continuous) for 0" margins _____________
For the first section, page 1 and the beginning of page 2 have
correctly a 1" margin about its top, left, and bottom. In the middle of
page 2, I switch to a section of 0" margins, but at the bottom of the
page, there still is a 1" margin, which should be a 0" margin. On the
next page, the bottom margin is correct at 0".
Any ideas ?
Thanks
Mike
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Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <
[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
