Section breaks, Tables, and problems with page numbers

[Josh]

Hello,

I am writing a fairly large document. One portion of it 27 pages long
contains 27 three-column tables with varying numbers of rows. Pages in this
portion of the document can have 0, 1, or 2 tables on it.

Each table is preceded by a continuous section break, the first two columns
are suceeded by a column break, and the final column is suceeded by another
continuous section break.

The page number of the page on which the first table resides is page 9,
which is correct. 27 pages later, the page number on which the last table
resides is page 10.

The page numbers within this 27 page portion don't seem to make much sense.
Sometimes they increment normally, sometimes they stay the same, sometimes
they reset to page 9 or 10. The highest page number in this 27 page portion
is page 12. The most common page number is page 10.

I don't know how or why this is occuring. Could someone please give me some
insight in how to troubleshoot and fix this issue?

Thank you,

Josh

 

[Josh]

I should also mention that after this 27 page portion, the page numbers
proceed correctly as page 11, 12, 13, etc...

Josh

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In any given section, Format Page Number gives you the choice of "Continue
from previous section" or "Start at." New sections tend to inherit the
setting in the previous section. Once you've restarted numbering at 9 in a
given section, then new sections are likely going to do the same, so you get
a long string of page 9s.

Continuous section breaks complicate the issue because you can't access
Format Page Number for sections in the middle of a page from the Header and
Footer toolbar (since these sections have no header or footer). There are
two possible approaches: you can insert temporary page breaks in order to
access the Header/Footer, or you can use Insert | Page Numbers (with the
insertion point in one of these center sections). In this dialog, you click
the Format Page Number button, change to "Continue from previous section,"
click OK to return to the Page Numbers dialog, and then carefully choose
Close instead of OK so you don't insert another page number.

What I'm curious about those, is these "three-column tables" that appear to
be in three newspaper-style columns. Do you really have three three-column
tables (or portions of a table) abreast? Nothing wrong with that, if that's
what you need, but I'm just wondering if you're confusing the uses of tables
and snaking columns.

BTW, if this is a continuous table (or even if it isn't), it may be possible
to avoid using column breaks. A continuous section break at the end of the
section will balance the columns, if that's all you're shooting for.
Moreover, you can force table rows to the next column by the judicious
application of the "Keep with next" property. If this IS a continuous table,
that has the added advantage that any heading row(s) will be repeated in the
following column because the table isn't split (nor will you have extraneous
empty paragraphs to deal with).

 

[Josh]

Suzanne,

Thank you so much for your help.

I performed the steps like you suggested and inserted page breaks after each
section break to access the header information. I then set the page number
to continue from previous section. After that I removed the page break and
it worked like a charm!

As far as the 3-column tables go, it's not like newspaper-style columns. I
am documenting a database with 27 tables in it. The 3-column tables in the
document have the headings "Field", "Data Type", and "Size". So each table
in the document always has the same number of rows.

Where do you set this "keep with next" property?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Line and Page Breaks tab of Format | Paragraph. If you use it often, you may
want to find the ParaKeepWithNext command in Tools | Customize (All
Commands) and add it to a toolbar; I find this saves me a lot of time.