How to avoid having subtitles that are close to the bottom of a pa

[wildetudor]

Hello everyone,

I have subtitles in my document (formatted with the Heading2 and Heading3
styles respectively) which, depending on how text in the document is arranged
at any one time, may ocasionally be placed at the bottom of the page, with
only one or two rows of text following the subtitle, before the page ends. I
don't think that looks good in the final, printed version of the document.

The level-1 titles (formatted with Heading1) on the other hand, are set to
have a page break before (from the style's Paragraph settings), such that a
new chapter always starts neatly from the top of the page. However, while I
don't want the level-2 and level-3 titles to begin new pages, I don't want
them to lie very close to the bottom of a page either.

My question is, therefore: is there a setting that can be done to a Heading
style that avoids text being placed close to the bottom of a page, perhaps by
inserting a page break before but then dynamically removing the page break if
text in the document is rearranged such that the text is no longer "in
danger" of being close to the bottom? Obviously, I could do this manually
before printing, but since my document is very long, I'd much prefer having
this done automatically.

Thanks very much for any help.

 

[DeanH]

Specifically for the Heading styles, add the Formatting attribute of "Keep
with next", found in Format, Paragraph, Line and Page Breaks tab. This will
ensure that if the following paragraph flips to the next page, the Heading
will follow.
For the situation when two/three lines of the following paragragh are at the
bottom of the page, not very nice I know, firstly ensure that you have
Widow/Orphan Control checked for the style of this paragraph, this will flip
over the page any paragraph with either one line left on either page.
Secondly you can use the Keep line together option, which will make the whole
paragraph, regardless of how many lines go over the pagebreak, flip to the
next page.
Beware, if you set up this as a blanket setting, you may get too many large
gaps at the bottom of your pages, which is not nice either, if this style is
the "normal" body text style.
I tend not to have the KLT setting as a default, but once editing is
complete, a pagination run-through, applying this attribute as required, does
not take too long, even with very large documents.
Maybe a macro guru can hop in here with a "automatic" solution for you.
All the best.
DeanH

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

To add to what Dean has said, adding buttons for "Keep with next," "Keep
lines together," and "Page break before" to your toolbar not only makes it
MUCH easier to apply these properties but also provides a visual reference
(by their on/off state) as to which properties are applied to a given
paragraph.

Unfortunately, by default these buttons have no icons; to remedy that, you
can get button images created by Robert Franz at
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/CustomToolbar.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[wildetudor]

Thanks Dean and Suzanne!
Unfortunately, enabling those three options doesn't seem to be able to avoid
having a Heading2 subtitle (for example) very close to the bottom of the
page, as can be seen in this screenshot: http://www.badongo.com/pic/5564512

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What that picture is showing is those properties applied to the heading
itself. If there is text after the heading that is on the next page, then
there must be an empty paragraph after the heading; otherwise the heading
would stay with the text. This is a perfect illustration of why you should
not use an empty paragraph to create a "blank line." To allow space between
your heading and following text, apply Spacing After to the heading style.

And there is no point applying "Keep lines together" to the heading (which
is unlikely to be more than two lines long). You must instead apply that to
the paragraph following the heading so that that paragraph will stay in one
piece, and the heading, formatted as "Keep with next," will stay with it.
Just don't apply these properties to *all* paragraphs or Word will go crazy
trying to make an infinite stream of text stay together.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[wildetudor]

Hello, thanks for your reply. I had not introduced a blank line by inserting
an empty paragraph - if I wanted a space after the heading, I would have used
SpaceAfter, as you said.

I actually created that test document again, and this time, if "Keep With
Next" was checked, the subtitle would stay close to the first paragraph - but
only if that paragraph was one or two lines long. If it had three or more
lines, then only the first two lines of the paragraph would stay with the
subtitle, while the rest would go onto the next page. I guess I could make
the whole paragraph stay with the title if I checked "Keep lines together"
manually for each first paragraph after each subtitle. However, I wish there
had been an option to control that under the style definition (such as "Keep
with next paragraphs, if it has at most ... lines").

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You are now back where we started: where I said to use "Keep with next" for
the heading and "Keep lines together" for the following paragraph.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[wildetudor]

Yes, and where I also said that I'd rather find an automatic way of doing
this rather than having to do it manually.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can do this automatically by defining, as the following style for a
heading, a style that includes "Keep lines together" and another style,
without KLT, for the following style to that style. I generally have this
setup anyway, as I use a flush left style (Body Text) following headings and
then an indented style (Body Text First Indent) as the style to follow that.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[wildetudor]

I see - well, this completes the answer to my question
Thank you once again for your help Suzanne.