Have You Broken Any of Your Documents (into sections, that is)?

What You Don't Know About Section Properties May Surprise You
Most Word users can easily explain the properties of the characters in their documents—font name, font size, bold, italic, underline, etc. Most can explain the properties of the paragraphs in their documents, too—align left, keep with next, etc.

However, most users can't as easily explain the properties of the sections in their documents. Indeed, many users don't even realize that all documents contain at least one section and that every section in a document has an extensive collection of properties.

Fortunately, section properties are just as easy to understand as character properties and paragraph properties.

Section Properties: They're Everywhere You Want To Be
Section properties include page borders, page line numbers, page margins, page orientation (portrait or landscape), and number of text columns per page. Even headers and footers are section properties...more about this later.

You might be wondering, don't these properties belong to the document as a whole? As a matter of fact, no!

It's certainly true that, by default, all the pages in a Word document have the same borders, line numbers, margins, orientation, and number of text columns. But that just shows that, by default, Word documents contain a single section and all pages belong to that section. Since they're all in the same section, the pages all have the same borders, line numbers, margins, orientation, and number of text columns.

If You Want To Make An Omelette, You've Got To Break Some Eggs
If you want some pages in a document to have different borders than others, or different line numbers or margins or orientation or number of text columns, then you need to "break" your document into multiple sections. That way, you can adjust the properties of one section without affecting the properties of the other sections.

If you stop and think about it, sections are no different than paragraphs in this way. If you want some of your text to be aligned left and some to be aligned center and some to be aligned right, then you have to break your document into multiple paragraphs. That way, you can adjust the alignment and other properties of one paragraph without affecting the properties of the other paragraphs.

Breaking A Document Into Multiple Sections
Breaking a document into paragraphs is easy. Simply position the cursor where you want to start a new paragraph and hit Enter. Breaking a document into sections is almost as easy. Simply position the cursor where you want to start a new section and then pull down the Insert menu and choose Break (or hit Alt/I, then B) to display the Break dialog box, then choose the type of section break you want.

A Word Of Warning About Section Break Characters
To view section breaks that have been inserted into a document, on the Standard Toolbar click the Show All button (or hit Ctrl/Shift/8, 8 is from the alpha numeric keys). Then watch out! If you delete a section break, the pages preceding the deleted section break will lose their existing section properties and take on the properties of whatever section break comes after the deleted one. If there are no section breaks after the deleted one, the pages preceding the deleted section break will take on the properties of the final section of the document. (The properties of the final section are stored in the document's final paragraph mark.)

How To Set Section Properties
After a document has been broken into sections, the properties of each section can be adjusted without affecting the properties of other sections. Here's how:

1. Position the insertion point in the section whose properties you want to set. Make sure no text is selected. (If text is selected, Word may insert section breaks before and after the selected text in order to isolate the selected text in its own section, so that properties of that section won't affect other sections.)
   
   
   
   
2. On the File menu, choose Page Setup and select appropriate values for all three types of properties in the Page Setup dialog box, which include margins, paper, and layout properties. Then choose This Section or Whole Document and click OK to apply the page setup properties to the current section or to all sections in the document.
   
   
   
   
3. On the Format menu, choose Columns and select appropriate values for the column properties. Then choose This Section or Whole Document and click OK to apply the column properties to the current section or to all sections in the document.
   
   
   
   
4. On the Insert menu, choose Page Numbers. Then choose Format and select the appropriate values for the page number properties and then click OK and click Close. (Note! Be careful! If you click OK and then click OK again, instead of clicking Close, you will insert a page number, not just set the page number properties.)

How To Create A New Section And Set Its Properties At The Same Time

1. Select the text for the new section or position the insertion point where you want the new section to begin.
   
   
2. On the File menu choose Page Setup and select appropriate values for the page setup properties of the new section. Or, on the Format menu choose Columns and select appropriate values for the column properties of the new section. Then choose Selected Text or This Point Forward and click OK to create the new section and set its properties at the same time.
   

Headers And Footers: The Ultimate In Section Properties
The contents of Headers and Footers are section properties, too, although headers and footers can be Linked to previous, in which case they will exhibit the contents of the corresponding header or footer of the previous section.

To change the contents of a header or footer, position the insertion point on the desired page, then choose View/Header and Footer.

To link a header or footer to the corresponding header or footer of the previous section, view the header or footer and click the Link To Previous button on the Header and Footer toolbar.

Note! More information about headers and footers will be provided in a future article.

Go Forth and Break Your Documents! (into sections that is)
Want to know more about section breaks? Look up section breaks in the Help system. Better yet, follow the procedures provided above and try entering a range of different values for each section property. You'll be surprised how easy it can be. More important, you'll discover that section properties can often help you to create better documents in less time.

Bonus! Section Manager Macro
Microsoft provided a Section Manager macro in Office 97, which can be used with Office 97 and above. Click the following link to download the Section Manager code module and follow the instructions to add this useful macro to Word. Download: http://www.mousetrax.com/Downloads.html#SectionMgr

Need further help getting your complex Word docs formatted? Join our free Word Doc Design support group! See this link for details: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Word_DocDesign/ .