Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Controlling Repagination in Macros.

Controlling Repagination in Macros

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 25, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021


Ken asked if there is a way to turn off automatic repagination of a Word document while a macro is running. It turns out, in fact, that there are two ways you can handle this.

The first method is to use the Pagination property of the Options object. You can set this property to either True or False, as follows:

Options.Pagination = False

This property is the same as setting the Enable Background Repagination option in the General section of the Advanced options (in the Word Options dialog box). If the property is set to False, then Word does not perform any background repagination. You can later set the property to True to turn the feature back on.

The second method for handling automatic repagination is to simply turn off screen updating. If your macro does quite a bit of slicing and dicing on the document, this is always a good idea, anyway, as it stops Word from trying to update the display. In some cases, the speed improvement for your macro can be dramatic if you turn off screen updating. You control screen updating in this manner:

Application.ScreenUpdating = False

Again, the ScreenUpdating property can be set to either True or False. If set to False, screen updating is turned off. If you turn it off, you should always set ScreenUpdating to True before ending your macro.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9233) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Controlling Repagination in Macros.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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