Working with Section Breaks

A section break splits your document's pages into sections that can have a different format or layout. For example, you can create pages that have different headers and footers, orientations (portrait/landscape), margins and columns. Section breaks are used to allow formatting changes (i.e., different margins, page number styles, etc.) in the same document.  

Formatting with Section Breaks

The page breaks partition only the body text of the document. Whereas, the section breaks partition both the body text of the document, as well as partition page margins, page numbers, headers and footers. Also, allows you to:

• Have different margins for different pages that helps to have a different design for cover page.
• Have different headers and footers for select pages.
• Mix paper orientation -> If you have content that will only fit onto a landscape page, you can use section breaks to create a landscape section in your portrait document.
• Position text of section relative to the top and bottom margins, and it is often used to create a cover page.
• Have page borders for select pages.
• Start page numbering from a specific page.

Inserting Section Breaks

To insert section breaks,

1. Place the cursor on where you wanted to insert the section break.
2. Click More > Insert tab.
3. Under Sections & Pages, select Break > Section Break
4. Then, choose the required type of section break, either Continuous or Next Page

Types of Section Breaks

Continuous

This allows one section of a document to end and another to begin on the same page. You can combine different column layouts on a single page. For instance, let us assume you have a document with 5 pages, and you want to format in the beginning such as title and introduction as one column and the rest of the document to remain as two columns.

Next Page

When you insert the next page section break, a new section will be started at the point of your cursor. Also, a page break will be inserted which means a new section starts on the next page. Each section can have different page orientations, page number styles, margins, etc.

Remove Section Breaks

To remove section breaks,

1. Click More > Format tab.
2. Under Paragraph, select ¶ (Pilcrow) icon - this reveals the section break marks as shown below.
3. Now, select and delete it. Section breaks will be removed.