section breaks in Word 2000 gone haywire

[aviation editor]

I've inherited a document that has MANY sections; however, when I ask Word to
"find" the section breaks, it says there aren't any. I cannot see them
either; however, I know they are there because when I "View Header/Footer,"
there are 30 sections within the first 22 pages of a 150-page document. Is
there a way to completely delete all of these sections. I just want to start
over with inserting sections where I need them. Thanks for any advise.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you set the Browse Object to Browse by Section (using the button between
the browse arrows at the bottom of the vertical scroll bar), can you not
find the section breaks? FWIW, they're a lot easier to see in Normal view.
You should also be able to search for them using ^b as a search term.

 

[aviation editor]

Thank you for your response Suzanne. The "Browse by Section" does take me to
each "section," but the section break does not show and when I try to delete
the paragraph mark that would contain the break, while I can delete the mark,
the section still remains. I also cannot see any of the sections in the
Normal view and when I search for them using ^b, it says none exist. Any
further guidance would be appreciated.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

On your status bar, you're seeing Section 2, Section 3, etc.? If you're not
finding them, perhaps they're hidden? Try displaying nonprinting characters
(or at least checking the box for "Hidden text" on the View tab of Tools |
Options.

 

[aviation editor]

That does not show me anything. Not only are there are total of 79 sections
in the document, but on the status bar, it jumps from, for example, section 5
to section 9; there is no sections 6 though 8. It's really weird. Have you
ever encountered such a thing?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you're going page by page, the jump in section number just means that
there are several Continuous section breaks on the page.

If you would like to send me a *small* sample of the problem document, I'll
take a look.