Page Breaks and Section Breaks: What Are They and How to Use Them
In the final part of our series on formatting your Word Document for printing, we’re turning our attention to page breaks and section breaks. These are vital to ensuring your project looks professional and is readable, and understanding how to use these tools can help you create a polished and organised document, so let’s dive in…
What are page breaks and section breaks?
Page breaks are used to move content to the next page without having to manually move the text by pressing the ‘Enter’ button. These breaks will ensure clear and consistent formatting throughout the document, preventing any misalignments when you later edit or resize the text.
Section breaks are used to divide your document into different sections, allowing you to make specific formatting changes for each part. For example, you can create separate headers, footers or page orientations as required, ensuring the formatting remains the same.
How to insert a page break
Inserting a page break into your document is incredibly simple and can be done in three simple steps:
Step one
Place your cursor where you would like the new page to begin.
Step two
Navigate to the ‘Layout’ tab in the top toolbar
Step three
Click on ‘Breaks’ and then select ‘Page Break’. This will shift the content after the cursor to the next page, and any subsequent edits will not affect where the new page begins.
Need some more help? Follow along with our guide here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_l8T0WO2Vw
How to insert a next page section break
Section breaks are ideal for when you need to apply a unique formatting option to specific parts of your document and are very simple to create:
Step one
Place your cursor at the point where you would like the new section to begin.
Step two
Go to the ‘Layout’ tab in the top toolbar
Step three
Navigate to the ‘Section Break’ section and then select ‘Next Page’. This will insert a new section that begins on the next page. You can also choose ‘Continuous’, ‘Even Page’ or ‘Odd Page’ section break options depending on your requirements.
Need some more help? Follow along with our guide here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10qewkfoG0k
How to insert and use section breaks in Microsoft Word
Once you have inserted section breaks as above and the document is divided into different sections, you can then make unique formatting changes that only apply to that section. For example, changing the page orientation or inserting different footers and headers.
To customise your headers and footers, first double-click in either the header or footer area. This will display the current section number. To unlink sections, navigate to the ‘Header and Footer’ menu in the top toolbar and uncheck ‘Link to Previous’. This will allow you to make any changes you like without affecting the previous sections.
Once you have your sections established, you will now be able to easily customise the formatting. To change the page orientation, click within your chosen section and navigate to the ‘Layout’ tab and then to ‘Orientation’. Here, you will be able to choose between landscape or portrait. You will also be able to customise your headers, footers, font, text size and alignment as required.
It’s important to remember that the changes you make at this point will affect everything that follows in the rest of the document; the link has only been broken in the previous section. Therefore, if you only want to amend one part of the document, you will need to add another section at the end.
Need some more help? Follow along with our guide here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-VBr6Aw23E
How to add a different first page in a section
Typically, when you are formatting a book, you do not want your headers to run over into your chapter title page. In order to amend this, you will need to create a different first page for each section. To do this:
Step one
Double-click on the header or footer area of the first page of your section.
Step two
Navigate to ‘Design’ and then to ‘Header and Footer’ in the top toolbar, and you will see an option that says, ‘Different First Page’. If you click this, it will allow the first page to be independent from the rest of the section.
Step three
Once you have selected that, you will be able to customise that first page without it affecting the rest of the section.
Need some more help? Follow along with our guide here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovmKO2r_sJU
Final thoughts
And that’s it! Our series on formatting your Word Document to ensure it’s ready for printing is finished, we hope you’ve found it insightful and useful. If you have any questions or would like some help with getting your book ready for printing, then get in touch with our team!