odd behavior of first page/odd page/even page footers

[ken]

I noticed something that I don't understand nor do I like the results. I
set up my document for odd/even footers and different first page
header/footers along with start with odd pages. I've set my margins for
0.9" on the left and 0.5" on the right and 0.5" for the top and bottom with
0.5" for header and footer gap along mirrored margins. When I printed the
first 20 pages I noticed that I had a different gap at the bottom of the odd
and even pages. The odd pages have about 1.0" of gap while the even pages
have a 0.5" gap. This problem doesn't show up with the headers for odd/even
pages. Any ideas as how to make them the same?

TIA,
Ken Erickson

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

There is no way to set the "gap" between document margins and header/footer
margins. You set the top and header margins and the bottom and footer
margins, and here's how they work (it's easier to see these effects if you
have text boundaries displayed [check box on the View tab of Tools |
Options]):

1. The top margin determines where the document body begins, with several
exceptions:

(a) If you have Space Before after a section break or manual page break
(and haven't enabled any available Compatibility Option to suppress this),
you'll get space between the top margin and the top line of text.

(b) If you have set the paragraph spacing to an Exact amount, some or
all of the excess line spacing will be between the top margin and the first
line of type.

(c) If the header exceeds the allotted space, it will push the document
body down.

2. The bottom margin determines where the document body will stop. The text
may stop well short of this point in several cases:

(a) If you have "Widow/orphan control" enabled (which it is by default)
on the Line and Page Breaks tab of Format Paragraph and there is not room
for at least two lines of a paragraph at the bottom of the page, the whole
paragraph will move to the next page, leaving at least one line's space at
the bottom of the page (possibly two if the paragraph is only three lines
long).

(b) If you have the paragraph spacing set to an Exact or multiple
amount, the situation in (a) is exaggerated, since the movement of one line
to the next page may leave two lines' space.

(c) If you have a heading with Space Before, formatted as "Keep with
next" (as headings should be, and as Word's built-in heading styles are by
default), followed by a single line of a paragraph formatted with
"Widow/orphan control", the heading will move with that paragraph to the
next page.

(d) If there is a footnote reference in the last line (or few lines) of
text such that there is no room for the footnote on the same page, both
reference and footnote will move to the next page.

(e) Naturally if you have inserted a manual page break or applied the
"Page break before" property to a paragraph, the page will stop short.

3. The header margin determines where the header *starts*. The default 0.5"
header margin means that the first line of header text will be 0.5" from the
top of the page. If you add additional header lines, they will push
downward. If they exceed the top margin, they will push the document body
down.

4. The reverse is true of the footer margin; it determines where the bottom
of the last line of footer text will be. Additional lines will pile up on
top, eventually pushing the document body upward.

It is fairly easy to maintain an even gap between the header and the top of
the document body; it is not possible to have exactly the same space between
the footer and the document body on every page unless (a) all text is
single-spaced (or it all uses the same Exact or Multiple spacing), (b)
widow/orphan control is disabled, (c) there are no headings or anything else
with different spacing or Space Before/After, (d) there are no footnotes to
throw anything off. You can achieve maximum uniformity by setting the
vertical alignment to Justified (Layout tab of Page Setup), but you probably
won't be happy with the results.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[ken]

Suzanne,

I do have the text boundaries displayed and this is where I see the "gap"
between the text boundary and the bottom margin. Good thing is I've found
the problem and solved it.

It turns out that after creating a odd/even page layout for header/footers I
created a separate first page (odd page). I then added a page number for
the first page in the footer section. All other pages (odd/even) have the
page number in the header section. I noticed that there was no paragraph
mark in the footer section of the first even page where as the second odd
page did have a paragraph mark that forced the text boundary up (as I would
expect there is any text there like with a page number). When I added a
dummy paragraph mark to the first even page all my bottom text boundaries
matched. I tried to remove the blank line in the footer where there is no
page number but word won't allow my to so adding the dummy paragraph mark
seemed the easiest way to get around my problem. Any way, I now have a page
layout that looks consistent across all sections.

Thanks again,
Ken Erickson

There is no way to set the "gap" between document margins and header/footer
margins. You set the top and header margins and the bottom and footer
margins, and here's how they work (it's easier to see these effects if you
have text boundaries displayed [check box on the View tab of Tools |
Options]):

1. The top margin determines where the document body begins, with several
exceptions:

(a) If you have Space Before after a section break or manual page break
(and haven't enabled any available Compatibility Option to suppress this),
you'll get space between the top margin and the top line of text.

(b) If you have set the paragraph spacing to an Exact amount, some or
all of the excess line spacing will be between the top margin and the first
line of type.

(c) If the header exceeds the allotted space, it will push the document
body down.

2. The bottom margin determines where the document body will stop. The text
may stop well short of this point in several cases:

(a) If you have "Widow/orphan control" enabled (which it is by default)
on the Line and Page Breaks tab of Format Paragraph and there is not room
for at least two lines of a paragraph at the bottom of the page, the whole
paragraph will move to the next page, leaving at least one line's space at
the bottom of the page (possibly two if the paragraph is only three lines
long).

(b) If you have the paragraph spacing set to an Exact or multiple
amount, the situation in (a) is exaggerated, since the movement of one line
to the next page may leave two lines' space.

(c) If you have a heading with Space Before, formatted as "Keep with
next" (as headings should be, and as Word's built-in heading styles are by
default), followed by a single line of a paragraph formatted with
"Widow/orphan control", the heading will move with that paragraph to the
next page.

(d) If there is a footnote reference in the last line (or few lines) of
text such that there is no room for the footnote on the same page, both
reference and footnote will move to the next page.

(e) Naturally if you have inserted a manual page break or applied the
"Page break before" property to a paragraph, the page will stop short.

3. The header margin determines where the header *starts*. The default 0.5"
header margin means that the first line of header text will be 0.5" from the
top of the page. If you add additional header lines, they will push
downward. If they exceed the top margin, they will push the document body
down.

4. The reverse is true of the footer margin; it determines where the bottom
of the last line of footer text will be. Additional lines will pile up on
top, eventually pushing the document body upward.

It is fairly easy to maintain an even gap between the header and the top of
the document body; it is not possible to have exactly the same space between
the footer and the document body on every page unless (a) all text is
single-spaced (or it all uses the same Exact or Multiple spacing), (b)
widow/orphan control is disabled, (c) there are no headings or anything else
with different spacing or Space Before/After, (d) there are no footnotes to
throw anything off. You can achieve maximum uniformity by setting the
vertical alignment to Justified (Layout tab of Page Setup), but you probably
won't be happy with the results.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

I noticed something that I don't understand nor do I like the results. I
set up my document for odd/even footers and different first page
header/footers along with start with odd pages. I've set my margins for
0.9" on the left and 0.5" on the right and 0.5" for the top and bottom with
0.5" for header and footer gap along mirrored margins. When I printed the
first 20 pages I noticed that I had a different gap at the bottom of the odd
and even pages. The odd pages have about 1.0" of gap while the even pages
have a 0.5" gap. This problem doesn't show up with the headers for odd/even
pages. Any ideas as how to make them the same?

TIA,
Ken Erickson

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

A "blank line" and an empty paragraph are the same thing, whether you see
the paragraph mark or not. What often happens, however, is that if you
copy/paste text from one header/footer into another, no matter how carefully
you select everything *but* the paragraph mark and paste into the empty
paragraph, Word will still paste an entire paragraph, leaving you with an
empty paragraph below the text you pasted. It can be very infuriating, but
if you have nonprinting characters displayed, it's pretty easy to
troubleshoot.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Suzanne,

I do have the text boundaries displayed and this is where I see the "gap"
between the text boundary and the bottom margin. Good thing is I've found
the problem and solved it.

It turns out that after creating a odd/even page layout for header/footers I
created a separate first page (odd page). I then added a page number for
the first page in the footer section. All other pages (odd/even) have the
page number in the header section. I noticed that there was no paragraph
mark in the footer section of the first even page where as the second odd
page did have a paragraph mark that forced the text boundary up (as I would
expect there is any text there like with a page number). When I added a
dummy paragraph mark to the first even page all my bottom text boundaries
matched. I tried to remove the blank line in the footer where there is no
page number but word won't allow my to so adding the dummy paragraph mark
seemed the easiest way to get around my problem. Any way, I now have a page
layout that looks consistent across all sections.

Thanks again,
Ken Erickson

There is no way to set the "gap" between document margins and header/footer
margins. You set the top and header margins and the bottom and footer
margins, and here's how they work (it's easier to see these effects if you
have text boundaries displayed [check box on the View tab of Tools |
Options]):

1. The top margin determines where the document body begins, with several
exceptions:

(a) If you have Space Before after a section break or manual page break
(and haven't enabled any available Compatibility Option to suppress this),
you'll get space between the top margin and the top line of text.

(b) If you have set the paragraph spacing to an Exact amount, some or
all of the excess line spacing will be between the top margin and the first
line of type.

(c) If the header exceeds the allotted space, it will push the document
body down.

2. The bottom margin determines where the document body will stop. The text
may stop well short of this point in several cases:

(a) If you have "Widow/orphan control" enabled (which it is by default)
on the Line and Page Breaks tab of Format Paragraph and there is not room
for at least two lines of a paragraph at the bottom of the page, the whole
paragraph will move to the next page, leaving at least one line's space at
the bottom of the page (possibly two if the paragraph is only three lines
long).

(b) If you have the paragraph spacing set to an Exact or multiple
amount, the situation in (a) is exaggerated, since the movement of one line
to the next page may leave two lines' space.

(c) If you have a heading with Space Before, formatted as "Keep with
next" (as headings should be, and as Word's built-in heading styles are by
default), followed by a single line of a paragraph formatted with
"Widow/orphan control", the heading will move with that paragraph to the
next page.

(d) If there is a footnote reference in the last line (or few lines) of
text such that there is no room for the footnote on the same page, both
reference and footnote will move to the next page.

(e) Naturally if you have inserted a manual page break or applied the
"Page break before" property to a paragraph, the page will stop short.

3. The header margin determines where the header *starts*. The default 0.5"
header margin means that the first line of header text will be 0.5" from the
top of the page. If you add additional header lines, they will push
downward. If they exceed the top margin, they will push the document body
down.

4. The reverse is true of the footer margin; it determines where the bottom
of the last line of footer text will be. Additional lines will pile up on
top, eventually pushing the document body upward.

It is fairly easy to maintain an even gap between the header and the top of
the document body; it is not possible to have exactly the same space between
the footer and the document body on every page unless (a) all text is
single-spaced (or it all uses the same Exact or Multiple spacing), (b)
widow/orphan control is disabled, (c) there are no headings or anything else
with different spacing or Space Before/After, (d) there are no footnotes to
throw anything off. You can achieve maximum uniformity by setting the
vertical alignment to Justified (Layout tab of Page Setup), but you probably
won't be happy with the results.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the

newsgroup

so
all may benefit.

the
odd