IMHO
I would hate to get in between the protagonists in this debate - especially
since you outclass me in all aspects of Word knowledge (and possibly
elsewhere too) - but I had to make a note here because its like watching my
parents squabble.
Since the dawn of wordprocessors (meaning Wordstar for me) there have been
two or three main types of documents - one off small items like letters that
are filed and forgotten. Long presentations that are rarely updated, and the
ever present and never complete 'monthly reports' that grow and morph and can
never be entirely 'cleaned up' for fear of losing something useful - and
where they have been in use for several months, or in some cases years, they
will have been played around with in the most exciting ways as one or more
'owners' moves them in a different direction for 'ease of use' or because
they read about a new function or it got damaged and rebuilt and so on.
I would expect that any document that was created before the last major
release of Office (wherever your organisation happens to be at the moment)
there will be at least one glaring anomaly that everybody works around - be
it page numbering, misuse of tab stops, faulty tables, broken multi-level
lists, mis-used, mis defined and generally broken styles and, especially,
improper use of page breaks and section breaks especially around changes in
format (portrait/landscape, columns, charts and so on). To suggest that
people have the time, energy or political will to redesign some of these
things from scratch is just ignoring the problem and to suggest that the poor
sap who originated it was negligent in their handling of esoteria like
section breaks (which only a coder can love) is to ignore the possibility it
was created before they knew what a section break was (because Word puts them
in automatically around the columns then helpfully hides the fact using the
defaults you have discussed)
The OP said it needed to be simple - ergo the OP should consider spending
time and money redesigning the document, make use of some of the later
features and generally tidy it up.
Cybertaz - pamelia disagreed with you in a fairly polite way and pointed out
some problems that she is aware of - get over it and be less pedantic and
sensitive next time
Pamelia - not everyone has your specific experience and some people DO
design documents within the constraints of the tool so remember that next
time you imply someone is in the wrong - the 'IMHO' tag is quite useful here.
Peter - despite what you say (IMHO) most people DO insert columnation after
the body of the document is drafted because some smart ass comes along and
says - 'that would look better as two columns and can you add this chart in
the middle of page 3 and can we have this part landscape and we need the
foreword to use roman numerals and we want a Table of Contents with
hyperlinks etc etc etc'
Reg - shut the f*k up and do some real work you windbag
- just my 5 cents hth
RegMigrant
Peter T. Daniels said:
But most people _don't_ insert their columniation after the document
is finished; they will insert section breaks as they're typing along,
and if there's a two-column passage less than one page long, they will
likely encounter the problem Pamelia explains how to cure.
Your procedure works, as she said, only in the simplest cases. She
didn't suggest that what you said is "untrue," only that it's true
only a small part of the time.
CyberTaz wrote:
The fact remains, though, that the imposition of Continuous section breaks
-- or any other type -- neither inherently disrupts the continuity of
Headers or Footers, nor interferes with page numbering. Further, it makes
absolutely no difference whether the CSBs span a single empty paragraph or
multiple pages... or even whether there are several CSBs on a single page.
I very much disagree with you on this point. Try this: in a new document
header, add the page number code and set the page numbering to start at 22.
Add page breaks until you get to page 26. Add some text, select it, and make
it double column. Add a page break after the text. The next page number
shown will be 23.
You don't seem to realize that you have done nothing here but reinforce the
very points I am making. I would never consider doing any such hatchet job
for experimental or any other purpose. *Anything* can be expected to fail if
it's jerry-rigged to do so. If you want a *valid* test of what I'm saying:
1- Create the new document & populate it with =rand(40,17),
2- Create you Header/Footer & include page numbers,
3- Select as many portions as you wish, each of whatever length you prefer &
apply your columnar layout as you go.
There will be NO disruption to the H/F or page numbering. This is what the
OP was attempting to do. Anything beyond that is irrelevant.
If you then want to hack at it in the manner you describe [i.e., "Add a page
break after the text."] I can't be held accountable for the consequences....
Nor can the original section breaks.
The band-aid fix is to change 23 to 27. But later changes to the document
that cause section 3 to cross pages will bring the page number problem back.
The better fix is to go to the header for section 3 (& any later sections, as
appropriate) and set the page number start value to continuous.
The best "fix" is to understand that Word replicates section settings in new
sections and to fix it before leaving the page.
... Or to avoid creating such a shambles in the first place. Quite frankly,
though, when I have to rework a document that has been mismanaged as badly
as what you describe I consider the "best fix" to reconstruct it.
You've conveniently snipped the last paragraph of my reply which pertains to
every aspect of your response, so I'll reinsert it here:
I don't doubt that you may have had to "fix such documents", but it isn't
the fault of the section breaks that the documents needed fixing. It's how
the sections were mangled that caused the breakage.
.
