Life without Section Breaks?

But most people _don't_ insert their columniation after the document
is finished; they will insert section breaks as they're typing along,
and if there's a two-column passage less than one page long, they will
likely encounter the problem Pamelia explains how to cure.

Your procedure works, as she said, only in the simplest cases. She
didn't suggest that what you said is "untrue," only that it's true
only a small part of the time.

On Jun 3, 6:54*am, CyberTaz wrote:
On 6/2/10 10:09 PM, in article a8f3c0034116a@uwe, "Pamelia Caswell *via

OfficeKB.com" u43222@uwe wrote:
CyberTaz wrote:
The fact remains, though, that the imposition of Continuous section breaks
-- or any other type -- neither inherently disrupts the continuity of
Headers or Footers, nor interferes with page numbering. Further, it makes
absolutely no difference whether the CSBs span a single empty paragraph or
multiple pages... or even whether there are several CSBs on a single page.

I very much disagree with you on this point. Try this: *in a new document
header, add the page number code and set the page numbering to start at 22.
Add page breaks until you get to page 26. *Add some text, select it, and make
it double column. *Add a page break after the text. *The next page number
shown will be 23.

You don't seem to realize that you have done nothing here but reinforce the
very points I am making. I would never consider doing any such hatchet job
for experimental or any other purpose. *Anything* can be expected to fail if
it's jerry-rigged to do so. If you want a *valid* test of what I'm saying:

1- Create the new document & populate it with =rand(40,17),
2- Create you Header/Footer & include page numbers,
3- Select as many portions as you wish, each of whatever length you prefer &
apply your columnar layout as you go.

There will be NO disruption to the H/F or page numbering. This is what the
OP was attempting to do. Anything beyond that is irrelevant.

If you then want to hack at it in the manner you describe [i.e., "Add a page
break after the text."] I can't be held accountable for the consequences....
Nor can the original section breaks.



The band-aid fix is to change 23 to 27. *But later changes to the document
that cause section 3 to cross pages will bring the page number problem back.
The better fix is to go to the header for section 3 (& any later sections, as
appropriate) and set the page number start value to continuous.
The best "fix" is to understand that Word replicates section settings in new
sections and to fix it before leaving the page.

... Or to avoid creating such a shambles in the first place. Quite frankly,
though, when I have to rework a document that has been mismanaged as badly
as what you describe I consider the "best fix" to reconstruct it.

You've conveniently snipped the last paragraph of my reply which pertains to
every aspect of your response, so I'll reinsert it he

I don't doubt that you may have had to "fix such documents", but it isn't
the fault of the section breaks that the documents needed fixing. It's how
the sections were mangled that caused the breakage.