Deleting section break deletes header - completely

[RobG]

I have a Word 2002 document with multiple sections. It has a different
first page specified in the first section.

I am trying to reduce the document to one section, however whenever I
remove the last section break, the header completely disappears and I
can't get it back. Viewing "headers and footers" shows only the
footer, I can't see or add a header.

I have tried reducing it to two sections, then make them identical in
regard to same headers, footers and layout (different first page, etc.)
but still no joy - as soon as I remove the last section break, the
headers are gone forever, and I can't put any back in.

What the???

PS. I'm so totally over Word. It is a genuinely bad word processor, it
has many, many foibles that appear to be either outright bugs or the
result of very poor programming.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This is not normal and is indicative of a corrupt document; see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[RobG]

This is not normal and is indicative of a corrupt document; see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm.

Thanks for the advice, I tried:

1. Deleting normal.dot - didn't help

2. Saving to HTML then loading back into Word - fixed a few other
issues (such as the style for following paragraph not being applied
properly) but not the header issue

I subsequently had a bit of a play to see what the default behaviour is
so maybe next time I could work around it. I discovered that if you
try a new document, add a header, create a section break - new page,
then delete it, the header is gone. That is absurd and must be
considered a bug in Word. If the headers of the sections are
different, it should at least keep one of the headers, or ask you which
one you wish to keep, not delete them both. .

If you create two sections and the first one is "different first page"
and the second one isn't, it will replace the first section page 1
header with that from the second.

If you create two sections, both with different first page, and make
the second one "same as previous", then delete the section and
intervening pages, it deletes all three headers. If you delete just
the section break, the second section's first page header becomes the
header of the second and successive pages, and the first page header is
deleted.

Who programmed that absurd behaviour? Essentially you can't remove
sections with different headers (and possibly footers, I didn't test
it) without significant pain.

Again, thanks for helping Suzanne but I'm still dirty on Word.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Note that you can have up to three headers (and three footers) within
a Word section, namely, if you enable "Different odd and even" as well
as "Different first page" in File | Page Setup, Layout tab. Each type
of header (footer) can be individually unlinked from the corresponding
type of header (footer) in the previous section. See
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/HeaderFooter.htm.

Having said that, also note that deleting section breaks can indeed
cause trouble; see
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting/WorkWithSections.htm.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

My understanding from what you wrote initially was not that Word deleted the
header content (which could be expected) but that the header pane was not
visible when you chose View | Header and Footer, which would be an
indication of a corrupt document.

If it's just a matter of content, then it could very well be that you had
content in a First Page Header which became inaccessible when you deleted a
section break because the remaining section did not have "Different first
page" enabled. As Stefan points out, these issues are treated in
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/HeaderFooter.htm and
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting/WorkWithSections.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.