How to Set Page and Section Breaks in Word 2010

How to Set Page and Section Breaks in Word 2010: Video

This video, titled “Setting Page and Section Breaks,” shows you how to set page and section breaks in Word 2010. Need more Word training? Click here for the complete tutorial!

Setting Page and Section Breaks in Word 2010: Overview

When you create a document, you set a paper size such as 8.5” by 11.” When you reach the end of the specified page size in Word, it will insert an automatic page break. Sometimes these automatic page breaks occur in places where you would rather not have them occur. For example, an automatic page break may leave one sentence on a second page, orphaned from the rest of the paragraph. You cannot delete automatic page breaks in Word. Instead, you must insert a manual page break at a point in the page prior to the occurrence of the automatic page break.

Inserting manual page breaks is not difficult. Just click into the document at the place where you want the page break to occur. This should, of course, be before the automatic page break. Then press “Ctrl”+“Enter” on your keyboard or click the “Breaks” button in the “Page Setup” group on the “Page Layout” tab of the Ribbon and then choose the “Page” option from the drop-down menu.

Note that while the page break may be the most commonly used type of document break that occurs, it is by no means the only type of document break available. When you click the “Breaks” button in the “Page Setup” group on the “Page Layout” tab of the Ribbon, you will see many of the other types of document breaks that are available for use in Microsoft Word. You can also select these types of breaks for your document, if the need arises. We will now examine the other types of document breaks that you can insert into your Word documents and their uses within the program.

A section break is much like a page break, but it breaks the sections of your document. When you insert a section break, you can then set the page layout independently for each section. For example, using a “Next Page” section break, each section could change the page layouts, like switching from a “Portrait” page orientation to a “Landscape” page orientation within a single document. There are three different types of section breaks that you can insert. They are “Next Page,” “Continuous,” “Odd Page,” and “Even Page.” A “Next Page” section break inserts a page break, but also creates two separate sections of the document so that each section can have its own unique page layout. A “Continuous” section break inserts a break, but continues the next section on the same page. The “Odd Page” or “Even Page” section break will place a break, and then continue the next section on the next odd or even numbered page. This is helpful for inserting section breaks into document that are intended for double-sided, bound printing.

If you select to view the non-printing characters in a document that contains a page break, you will see that a manual page break is identifiable by the words “Page Break” in the center of a dashed line within the document. You can easily delete these breaks just as you would any other character. You simply click into the line containing the “Page Break” character, and then press the “Delete” key on your keyboard.