Keeping Three Short Paragraphs on the Same Page

Phil has three short paragraphs that have "Keep with Next" and "Keep Lines Together" set, yet they will break across pages. He needs all three paragraphs to remain together, but cannot seem to make this happen.

There are multiple potential reasons for this behavior. First, three "short" paragraphs could add up to a lot of text. If that text will not fit on a single page (perhaps your document has a small page size), then Word will ignore the settings that Phil mentions (both of which are in the Paragraph dialog box) and break the paragraphs between pages.

You should also check to make sure that you are really only working with three paragraphs. For instance, you might have blank paragraphs between each of your three. This often happens if, for the purposes of vertical spacing, you press Enter multiple times at the end of each paragraph. It is best to not do this. Instead, make sure that the paragraphs are formatted to have space after them, again in the Paragraph dialog box. That way you will only need a hard return a single time after each paragraph.

The next thing to check is in the third paragraph—it should not have the "Keep with Next" setting turned on. That is because you don't want that paragraph to be kept with the following paragraph, but kept with the previous two. If the setting for paragraph three is turned on, and the paragraph that follows it is quite long, then (again) Word will ignore the settings because it cannot keep everything on a single page.

If things still don't work as expected, then check the paragraphs before and after the three you want kept together. If all of them have "Keep with Next" turned on, then (third time) Word will ignore the setting because you are asking the impossible. Why would they all be set to "Keep with Next?" Because the style used for the paragraphs could have had the attribute turned on inadvertently and, so, you are trying to "Keep with Next" for all paragraphs using that style.

Notice that, so far, I've only talked about the "Keep with Next" setting, not the "Keep Lines Together" setting. This is because the "Keep Lines Together" setting won't have any real effect on Phil's issue, provided the three paragraphs really aren't very long. It will only cause Word to do funny pagination if the aggregate of the three paragraphs is more than can fit on a page.

If, for some reason, you still cannot make the paragraphs stay together, you can take the rather drastic layout step of putting those paragraphs into either a text box or a single-celled table. As long as you format the text box or table to not have any borders, then you can easily make that element stay on the same page.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11493) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365.