Section breaks

  • Thread starter Thread starter Island Girl
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Island Girl

Yesterday someone asked for my help on a document which had 13 section breaks
containing exhibits. I was able to repair all but the 11th section, the
three-page content of which was in .jpg format. I was just wondering if that
had anything at all to do with the fact that nothing I tried to do in that
section worked. After “fixing†the 11th section it looked correct while
scrolling through the exhibit sections. The next thing I knew the very first
page (title page) of the document had an “Exhibit A†header. I’d fix it,
look through it, the exhibit pages would look fine, and then----same ol’
story: “Exhibit A†header on the first page. Have I lost entirely my grasp
on sections or could the picture content have anything to do with it? Should
I find another career?

Thanks so much for all of your help in the past, present--and most
certainly—the future!
 
I don't know how much of a grasp on Sections you had but nothing you do in
Section 11 should affect Section 1. The only possibility I can think of is
that, while editing in Section 11, you changed a Document setting that
affected Section 1; it is not always clear which settings are Section
settings and which are Document ones - for example "Different Odd and Even
page headers". It may also not be immediately obvious which Section's
Headers you are editing if you switch Views.

Beyond that fairly general note, all I can do is guess as I'm afraid your
use of the term "fix" does not describe what you did. Can you post more
specific details?
 
Thanks for the reply, Tony. I had a chuckle about my "fixing" the sections.

I was very careful to make sure that each new section was not linked to the
previous one and since there were sections before and after Section 11 that
were working well--at least when I scrolled through them immediately after
"fixing" the sections, I just couldn't figure out how in the world the very
first page of the document could have been affected.

I'm going to spend part of today reading everything I can find about
sections. I'll let you know if something "dawns" on me.

Thanks again, Tony.
 
I don't know if this will help or even if it's relevant but if you have
different first page headers and footers and continuous section breaks it is
possible that they don't display in sections other than the first because
the first page of continuous sections start in earlier sections and have the
header and footer of the earlier section. That doesn't explain a sudden
appearance by itself but if you have deleted a section break it could.

Other possibilities are more involved; conditional fields, for example. It
is certainly worth looking at actual, rather than just visible, content - of
all headers, whether actually shown on any physical page or not.
 
Funny you should mention conditional fields, Tony!

When I couldn't get the header to work right I thought I'd try some of my
"newfound knowledge" (I guess it was too soon to call it knowledge!) and put
a conditional header on it. I quickly abandoned that idea, but maybe I
didn't completely get rid of what I had started to do.

By the way, Tony, I would appreciate your answering a question for me:

Let's say I have a document that has 50 pages in it. Other people are at
times adding and/or deleting pages. But let's say that on what is now page
35 I always want a certain header to be on that page as well as the three
following pages. Other than a section break, is there a conditional field
way of indicating that no matter who adds or deletes a page, I always want a
certain page header to be on that particular page and the two that follow it?
In other words, is there a field that says "this physical page, no matter
where it falls?"

As you can tell, I just love trying to do things that I really don't fully
understand. When they sometimes work, though, it just encourages me to keep
trying! And with your help and that of the others in this wonderful
discussion group, I will always keep trying!
 
Unfortunately, you cannot do it the way you want because H&Fs are properties
of a section. So without section breaks, anything you attempt to put in the
Header on "page 35" is not limited to just Page 35 and the following two
pages: it will populate the header for the whole of that section or
document.

If it was always Page 35 + 2 pas and no one was going to edit or delete
preceding pages, it would be possible to do without section breaks. Is there
any reason why you cannot enclose these three particular pages in its own
section?
 
It's just that my previous "misfortune" with 14 section breaks left me so
shaken that I thought to myself, "There has to be another way!" Guess I'll
just have to keep practicing and reading about them. I've never liked
section breaks (much more needlessly complicated than WordPerfect's method,
as far as I'm concerned) but I can see they're here to stay.

I'd hate to think of where I'd be without your help, Terry, and that of your
fellow MVPs. Thanks a million!
 
You can use conditional fields to always show a header on page 35. But to
always show one on a page that, sometime in the past, was page 35 is not
possible. You can put a heading only on a page that contains certain
content, which you use as a way of identifying the page.

For example, you could put a bookmark on some text you know will be on the
page - or you could add something to the page, formatted as hidden if you
like, and put it inside a bookmark. Then you could use a PageRef in a
conditional Field to see if you were on that page. Say your Bookmark is
called TerraFirma, you could use a field like this:

{ IF { Page } = { PageRef "TerraFirma" } "This was once Page 35" }

(where the braces are all entered with Ctrl+F9, of course)

Compound conditions are rather awkward and the easiest way to get the same
heading also on what was page 36 is to have another field, like this:

{ IF { Page } = { PageRef "TerraFirma" } "This was once Page 35" }{ IF
{ Page } = "{ PageRef "TerraFirma" } + 1" "This was once Page 36" }
 
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