Stopping Row Breaking for Many Tables

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated July 8, 2020)

When working with tables, you may not want the rows in the table to break across pages. In other words, you want everything in each row to be on the same page. This is easy enough to do manually—you just adjust the table properties in this manner:

Select the row (or rows) you want to affect.
Display the Layout tab of the ribbon.
Click the Properties tool in the Table group. Word displays the Table Properties dialog box.
Make sure the Row tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Row tab of the Table Properties dialog box.

Clear the Allow Row to Break Across Pages option.
Click OK.

Now each row will stay on its own page. The table will still break across pages, but individual rows in the table will not.

While this seems easy enough, it can be tiresome to go through this same process for lots of tables in a document. For example, if you have 50 tables, then you'd have to go through the above steps 50 times. Argh!

The answer is to use a macro to change the Allow Row to Break Across Pages setting for all the tables. The following will do the trick:

Sub StopRowBreaking()
    Dim tbl As Table
    For Each tbl In ActiveDocument.Tables
        tbl.Rows.AllowBreakAcrossPages = False
    Next
End Sub

The macro works because it steps through each table and clears the setting (the AllowBreakAcrossPages property) for all the table's rows as a group. It is very quick, even if you have 50 or more tables in your document.

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 (13339) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365.

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. Learn more about Allen...

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What is 6 - 6?

2018-08-21 10:59:24

Maddy Scientist, Jr

Very useful. The only thing I would add is be sure to add "Set tbl = Nothing" at the end to release the object from memory. Like this:

Public Sub StopRowBreaking()
Dim tbl As Table
For Each tbl In ActiveDocument.Tables
tbl.Rows.AllowBreakAcrossPages = False
Next tbl
Set tbl = Nothing
End Sub ' StopRowBreaking

2014-12-20 23:25:28

Art Osgatharp

For more granular control, change ActiveDocument.Tables to Selection.Tables. Click and drag, or otherwise select, the part of the document containing the table or tables to process, then run the macro. The macro will process each table in the selection, leaving un-selected tables in the document unaffected.

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