- I Can't Get My Cell Margins Right
- I Get Page Breaks in Weird Locations
- My Repeating Table Headings Disappear
- Summing Up
I Get Page Breaks in Weird Locations
Have you ever seen a table that does not extend to the bottom page margin but instead breaks to the next page, several inches above where you think it should? I sure have, particularly because many of the documents I write include multipage tables.
This problem is another example of a paragraph style interacting with table layout to cause the problem. The relevant settings are found on the Line and Page Breaks tab of the Paragraph format dialog box. The usual culprit is the Keep With Next option. If this option is turned on for a paragraph, it prevents Word from inserting a page break between the paragraph and the next one. If the second paragraph does not fit on the current page, Word inserts the page break before the first paragraph, resulting in the problem we are talking about.
One other option on this tab can also be involved. The Keep Lines Together option prevents Word from inserting a page break within the paragraph, which can also result in a page break being inserted before the paragraph and leaving a gap at the bottom of the page.
Of course, these options can cause gaps at the bottom of pages even when tables are not involved. When in a table, however, users tend to try to solve the problem by changing table options when it is in fact the paragraph formatting that needs to be changed.