Section breaks to page breaks

[TedMi]

In a .doc file which is the output of a mail-merge, I want to change all of
the Next-Page Section breaks to Manual Page breaks. So I fill in the replace
dialog with Find ^b, Replace with ^m, click Replace all. I get a message
that 1 occurrence was changed, but that is not true - no changes were made.
Repeating the command results in zero changes. Find next finds the section
break, but a subsequent Replace does nothing. Why is that?

This behavior is the same in Word 2002 (Office XP) and Word 2007.

Thx,
-TedMi

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

I just tried ^b/^m find/replace here, and it works fine for me. Turn on
non-printing formatting marks (Ctrl+Shift+8/* toggles them). Then, instead
of Replace All, try Find Next, then click Replace to see exactly what's
being found and replaced. Here, I see Section Break (Next Page) changing to
Page Break.

Does Replace give you different results from Replace All?

Also... is this occurring just in that document, or does the problem occur
in new document, as well?

--

Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[TedMi]

Herb: Thanks for responding.
If I insert section breaks by hand into a new or existing doc, find/replace
works just fine, both Replace all and one-by-one. But in a doc created by
mail merge (which separates instances of the master with section breaks),
the replace fails. On the replace dialog, clicking "Find next" finds each
successive section break, but clicking Replace moves to the next break
WITHOUT replacing the current one.

-TedMi

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

I just tried it with a merge document, and it continues to work just fine...
this is in a merge-result document created in Word 2007, and find/replace
exercised in Word 2007 (running in Windows 7).

So... the question now is whether the document you're creating is somehow
different from what I'm creating, or if there's some other issue involved.

Does this happen with a newly-created set of merged documents (created in
Word 2007)? Or, is the source of the file(s) in which it's failing from Word
2002?

If you'd like, I can send you the merge-result document I created and you
can see if the ^b/^m find/replace works on it in your setup.

I.e.: is the document you're creating the problem? Or, are both Word
2002/2007 damaged somehow?

--

Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[TedMi]

More specifics on this behavior:
In a merged letter, ^b to ^m replacement works just fine. But if the merge
master is a table (labels), the section breaks between each page are not
replaceable. In normal (draft) view, if I highlight the section break and
type Ctrl-Enter, it has no effect! I can delete the break, but not replace
it. Deleting and then inserting (or typing) a page break inserts an empty
paragraph above the table, upsetting the alignment of text on the labels. If
the table extends to the bottom of the page, then deleting the breaks
without replacing them results in automatic page breaks.
Thanks for your efforts
-TedMi

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Oh, that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. It's well known that Word is
incredibly bloody-minded about removing *anything* between tables using
Replace (although you can delete breaks and paragraph marks manually). But
why do you need to remove the section breaks in a label merge?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[TedMi]

...
But why do you need to remove the section breaks in a label merge?

Because sometimes the margins need to be set to some value the printer
driver considers unprintable, but which print fine. Printing a 50-page doc
requires 50 responses to the message: "The margins of Section x are set
outside of the printable area..."

-TedMi

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Gotcha. FWIW, this never seems to happen when I use Avery labels, which
generally allow at least half an inch at the bottom, which is enough to
satisfy most printers.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org