Joined on 04-04-2002
TechSoup Member
We want to insert a page break if and only if a new section of the document starts too close to the bottom of the page. We want to do this because when we convert the doc to Acrobat the link from the table of contents does not jump properly if the heading is too close to the page break. The keep lines together option in Word doesnt seem to do the job. We want something like "if the heading starts within 20 lines of the bottom put a page break in". I remember WordPerfect and (dare I say it?) WordStar having this functionality and I thought Word did too.
Suggestions for either a fix in Word or in Acrobat would be most welcome.
I'm not completely sure about the misbehavior you tried to describe but... how about setting the heading of the target paragraph to "Keep with next"? That way, if the rest of the paragraph doesn't fit on the current page, the heading will go with it to the next page.
Joined on 04-04-2002
TechSoup Member
The problem is that keep with next seems to just apply to lines in a given paragraph - not a set of paragraphs or a heading and the following paragraph - so it does not do the job here.
Hi,
It sounds like the formatting error is associated with the .pdf conversion routine (not with Word); what software are you using to convert the document to pdf? (Acrobat Writer, Ghostscript, 602 Print Pack etc.?) - some are better at retaining your existing formatting than others (Acrobat has known problems, even with prior versions of Acrobat documents)
Rgds, Don
The problem is that keep with next seems to just apply to lines in a given paragraph - not a set of paragraphs or a heading and the following paragraph - so it does not do the job here.
The "keep with next" setting can be applied to multiple paragraphs and each will try to keep with it's successor (like a line of railway cars) unless there are more of them than can fit on a single page. What often frustrates people trying to accomplish this is that they have a nasty habit of hitting [Enter] twice to put a space between paragraphs and then they don't format the blank paragraphs between the textual paragraphs so, the effect is ruined. Either omit the extra "spacing" paragraphs (a better solution is to use the "space before" feature - press [Ctrl]+[0], i.e. control zero) to toggle a single line space before on or off) - OR - format the blank paragraphs with "keep with next". Then again, I could be wrong and it is indeed the Acrobat conversion. Good luck!
Printing to a PDF using the PDFwriter "printer" can cause problems with pagination, although I understand that is not what the original post describes. You can get more consistent pagination if you print to a postscript file and convert to a PDF using Distiller.
Zac