Forcing a Page Break Before a Paragraph

As you are creating your documents, there may be certain types of paragraphs that should always begin at the top of a page. For instance, you may have a certain paragraph format that you use for section headings. Your page design calls for all sections to begin at the top of a page, so you must come up with a way to ensure this always happens.

There are two ways you can do this. The first is to search for each section heading and manually insert a page break before each of the heads. This can be time consuming, however. It is much easier to format the paragraph so it always begins on a new page. This is done with these steps:

1. Position the insertion point in the section head paragraph.
2. Make sure the Home of the ribbon is displayed.
3. Click the small icon at the bottom-right of the Paragraph group. Word displays the Paragraph dialog box.
4. Display the Line and Page Breaks tab. (Click here to see a related figure.)
5. Make sure the Page Break Before check box is selected.
6. Click on OK.

If you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007, then follow these steps instead:

1. Position the insertion point in the section head paragraph.
2. Choose Paragraph from the Format menu. You will see the Paragraph dialog box.
3. Click on the Line and Page Breaks tab.
4. Make sure the Page Break Before check box is selected.
5. Click on OK.

Using page breaks before your section heads is even more automatic if you use a style for all of the heads. All you need to do is format the style so that the head will always have a page break before it. Then, every time you use that heading style, Word inserts the requisite page break.