How to remove page breaks - HELP?

[Brenda]

I have Office2007 and have been given a Word doc created by someone else. I
am in draft mode and am seeing what I believe to be page breaks the other
person inserted instead of letting the document page as it normally would.

I have looked in Word HELP, but I'm not quite finding the way to select the
page break so I can delete it. This is a 27 page document that is probably
only half that long, if it could page correctly.

I don't believe there are any empty spaces on the pages (forced paragraphs)
unless I don't know how to turn that function on. I am seeing the paragraph
marks at the ends of the lines that were put in, so I am guessing if they
were inserted to make the document page break where the original user wanted,
I would be seeing them.

Any and all help GREATLY appreciated.

Brenda

 

[Jay Freedman]

If there were any manual page breaks in the document, you would see
them in draft view (as dashed line across the screen with "Page Break"
in the middle of the line). You would also be able to use the Find
function to search for ^m.

If those steps don't reveal page breaks, the paragraph that starts a
new page may be formatted with "Page break before". Right-click one of
those paragraphs and select Paragraph to open the Format dialog, and
go to the Line and Page Breaks tab. If the "Page break before" box is
checked, uncheck it.

If that's the cause, you can use the Replace dialog to clear all of
them. In that dialog, click the More button. With the cursor in the
Find What box, click the Format button and choose Paragraph. On the
Line and Page Breaks tab, check the "Page break before" box and click
OK. Now put the cursor in the Replace With box, click the Format
button again, and this time clear the "Page break before" box (no
check and no filled square). Click the Replace All button.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Brenda]

Hi Jay,

In the 27 page document, the page breaks are dots, not dashes, and they do
not say "Page Break" in the middle of the line. I also did the find/replace
for ^m, and tried to replace with a blank, and 0 replacements were made.

I also followed your steps to look for the "Page Break Before" but the box
was not checked. I checked it, closed it, opened it back up and unchecked
it, just in case that would "reset" something, but there were no changes.

I should also add that when I received the document, it was set for
landscape orientation. That makes the page size correct, HOWEVER, all the
text is on the right side of the paper, with nothing on the left side of the
paper. The original person that had created this document had used it to
print off a yearbook. If I leave it in horizontal layout, each page is blank
on the left side with names, addresses and phone numbers on the right side.
I had changed it to portrait layout, thinking that would start correcting the
problem, but by changing it to portrait, each page is only about half filled
up (the top half) with a page break in the middle of the page. If "Page
Break" would indicate a manual set page break, then the original creator has
not manually put page breaks in the document.

My goal is to turn this document into what I would call a "normal" Word
document, so I can turn it into a pdf file, to post on a website for our
members who would not have received the hard copy yearbook.

Brenda

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Check the paragraphs for the "Keep with next" property.

 

[Brenda]

She has a hard break at the end of each line, with a double hard break
between people's names.

Example:
Smith, Susan (515) 222-1212 (HARD BREAK)
911 East Market Street Anytown 90210 (e-mail address removed) (HARD BREAK)
(HARD BREAK)
Jones, Tom (515) 333-1212 (HARD BREAK)
909 West Wisconsin Street Anytown 90210 (e-mail address removed) (HARD BREAK)
(HARD BREAK)
Next person's name and contact information (HARD BREAK)
(HARD BREAK)
...........................................................................................................
Ankeny, Betty (HARD BREAK)
614 S 19th Street Anytown 90210 (HARD BREAK)
(HARD BREAK)
Someone else's name, etc...

This is what her document looks like. When I select the Hard Break right
before the page break (...................) the "Keep with next" is not
checked. When I check it. all it does is move the page break down one line.

Brenda

 

[CyberTaz]

Check the paragraph that immediately *follows* one of the page breaks to see
if it has the Keep with Next (or possibly Page Break Before) attrib. In
fact, if you have non-printing characters (¶) displayed there will be a
bullet-like character in the margin to the left of the starting line of any
paragraph which has KWN applied.

As another approach: Have you considered just doing a Control+A, Copy, and
in a new doc using Edit> Paste Special> Unformatted Text? Unless you have
other formatting to preserve it might be a lot quicker & easier - although
less of a challenge

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Brenda]

Hi Bob,

I do have the non-printing charachters (¶) displayed and am not seeing any
bullet-like characters in the margin, but I now know what you are talking
about, because I just created one.

Following your advice, I did select all and then copied to Notepad, and then
copied that into a new Word document. (Works like a charm.) THANK YOU.

I am still bewiltered and dazzled (both at the same time) as to what the
original owner of this document did, to make it so bullet-proof (or
bullet-proof to ME).

MANY thanks to you and everyone who spent their time helping me.

~Brenda