Widow and orphan control not working

[gregc]

Hello,

I have the box checked for widow and orphan control but it is not working.
Several secretaries and paralegals have tried it and they can't get it to
work either. I appreciate any suggestions. Thank you.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Can you please further define "not working"?

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

 

[gregc]

We have documents that have the last line of a paragraph appearing on a
succeeding page. This is followed a blank line and then the next paragraph.
Thanks again for the help.

--
Greg

Can you please further define "not working"?

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

 

[Stefan Blom]

Was the "blank line" created by pressing Enter twice? If so, "Keep with
next" applies to the blank line, which is in fact a blank paragraph. You can
apply "Keep with next" to both of the two paragraphs, but a better solution
is to stop pressing Enter twice and instead add some Spacing Before to the
relevant paragraph (style).

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

We have documents that have the last line of a paragraph appearing on a
succeeding page. This is followed a blank line and then the next
paragraph.
Thanks again for the help.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

But the issue here is widow/orphan control, which should not strand a single
line of a paragraph at the top or bottom of a page. Where I have seen this
happen is where Word is wrapping text around a text box/frame used to create
an artificially wide left margin on page 1 (and this might affect text
wrapped around any object); Word seems to have difficulty calculating the
line breaks in this instance and perhaps doesn't realize that what would
require two lines on the first page (because of the wrapped object) will fit
on a single line on the following page.

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

 

[gregc]

Stefan, thank you fro the help.

Yes the "blank line" was created by pressing Enter twice and yes "Keep with
next" is checked for the whole document. If I uncheck "Keep with next" the
orphan exists on a page all by itself. I tried eliminating the blank line
and adding Spacing Before but the paragraph but that created a double blank
line before the paragraph.

Unless I'm missing something, the widow and orphan control doesn't always
work automatically. In those instances that it doesn't work, the widow or
orphan can be manually eliminated but that, in this instance, created other
widows and orphans on following pages of the document. The following widows
and orphans then have to be manually eliminated. It gets a bit tedious, but
it can be done manually.

If there is an automatic way to eliminate all widows and orphans, I would
like to know it.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

When the entire document is formatted as "Keep with next," then the snake
keeps chasing its tail throughout and Word has to insert page breaks
arbitrarily. When you remove this formatting from a single paragraph, then
of course all the text that is still chasing itself moves to the next page
(and Word heaves a sigh of relief).

I suspect that what you are doing is creating an outline using heading
styles. There's nothing wrong with this except that all heading styles are
formatted as "Keep with next." Remove this formatting for Heading 3 and
above, say, and your document will be much better behaved.

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

 

[Stefan Blom]

From the OP's description, it certainly seems as if he is using "Keep with
next" rather than "Widow/Orphan control."

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, widow/orphan control is enabled by default in all Word styles, but my
guess is that the problem is, as you surmised, KWN, which I gather he had
enabled for all paragraphs as well, but he didn't actually state that in the
OP, I think, and the issue of a blank line only came out in a subsequent
post as well.

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