Page breaks errious with footnotes before a section break (page)

[Duffy Kuehn]

Section 6 of a document is oriented as portrait, section 7 as landscape. To
get this working I have to insert a section break (page). So far, so good.
I inserted three footnotes on the last page of section 6, and now the
footnotes are not any longer displayed close to the bottom of the page but
there is quite a distance between the footer line and the last line of the
footnotes. To make things worse in this specific case there are now the last
two lines of section 6 on a new page although there is a lot of space left on
the page before.
For me it seems as Word calculates the space needed wrong (estimated double
the height actually needed, the distance grows when I put more text in the
footnotes).
It only happens on this specific page, all other footnotes are located
perfectly.

I tried already
- to insert a manual page break and a section break (continious) instead of
the section break (page) (doesn't work because word converts the section
break from continious to page since there is the change in orientation),
- to remove some footnotes (problem stays but the space varies as mentioned
related to the amount of text),
- to change Widow/ Orphan control of the last paragraph in section 6
(problem stays),
- to change the "Page break before" for the first line of section 7 (as it
is a chapter heading the style says so) (problem stays),
- to insert empty lines between the last lines of text and the section break
(problems stays until enough empty lines are inserted to move the section
break on a new page, which causes the footnotes to jump to the right position
of the original page but now I have a blank page in the document.)

To make things worse I can't create the same problem with a two page
document so that it would be easy for every one out there to see the problem.
So I could only show it to my colleagues at my company and no one could find
a solution.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Just to check: Do you have "Bottom of page" or "Beneath text" selected for
the footnote position? Assuming you have "Bottom of page" selected, I have
seen this problem once before, but I can't remember what the solution (if
any) turned out to be. What happens if you insert a Continuous section break
above the Next Page break?

 

[Duffy Kuehn]

Just to check: Do you have "Bottom of page" or "Beneath text" selected for

the footnote position? Bottom of page.
What happens if you insert a Continuous section break above the Next Page break?

It doesn't improve the situation. I also tried to change the (Next page) to
(Continuous) but Word doesn't allow this and change it back to (Next page) to
allow the change of orientation.

In the meantime I got a "dirty trick" to get my document "well" formated. I
lower the bottom page margin to 0. Word now thinks it has more space
available, moves the footnotes closer to (but still not next to) the footer
and gives space for the additional two lines. Drawback of this trick is that
the page margin is now 0 for all pages of the section. Surprisingly this
doesn't have any impact on the layout of the other pages, the main text still
breaks correctly over the footer or any footnotes there.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Surprisingly this

doesn't have any impact on the layout of the other pages, the main text still
breaks correctly over the footer or any footnotes there.

If you don't change the footer margin, then footer text will override the
bottom margin.

 

[Duffy Kuehn]

There was a good hint in your first email. I set the footnote option to
"below text" and now it works, naturally with the footnotes on the last page
moved some centimeters up but better than before as the two missing lines
found now their home on the first page.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Still not really a satisfactory solution. I wish I could remember whether
any solution was found in the previous cases where I saw this behavior.

 

[Duffy Kuehn]

Most people will not realise the change. I didn't like the workaround several
people at work came up with to lower the bottom page margin to zero or even
below to "fix" it.
When I see this I feel sad with Microsoft's developer that have to taken
such users into acount and still keep footnotes and footer in correct place.
Therefore no problem anymore, might be that this bug has been fixed in
Office 2007.

 

[Loffy]

I get some strange page breaks too. Tried to campture and share my problems
in this film:

http://www.screencast.com/users/lofgren/folders/Jing/media/1b5f4786-2f2d-45c5-88f9-ed20b6c3b7f5

Very strange problem, that I have not solved yet, that I think has to do
with the thread starter's problem.

 

[Duffy Kuehn]

Might. Actually my problem was not that Word (2003 and not 2007 as you are
using) inserted real page breaks but it just breaks the page at a wrong
location. It didn't insert a hard pagebreak after each line.