Changing the Type of a Section Break

Marissa has a document that has 30+ section breaks within it. Most of these are continuous section breaks, but Marissa wants them all to be next-page breaks. She knows that she can delete the section breaks she wants to change and insert the desired type, but Marissa is wondering if there is a way to change the break type directly. That way she won't lose any section formatting, as she would when deleting a section break.

To make manual changes to the type of section break, follow these steps:

1. Position the insertion point after the section break that you want to change. (Everything hinges on this step. Make sure the insertion point is after the section break!)
2. Display the Layout tab of the ribbon. (In some versions of Word, this may be called the Page Layout tab.)
3. Click the small icon at the bottom-right of the Page Setup group. Word displays the Page Layout dialog box.
4. Display the Layout tab of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Layout tab of the Page Layout dialog box.

5. Using the Section Start drop-down list, choose New Page.
6. Make sure the Apply To drop-down list is set to This Section.
7. Click OK to dismiss the dialog box. Word changes the type of section break for the section break immediately preceding where the insertion point is located (step 1).

There are a few things to note about these steps. First, you can only make this change using the Layout tab of the Page Layout dialog box. If you try to use the Breaks tool in the Page Setup group on the Layou tab of the ribbon, then Word inserts a new section break instead of changing the existing section break.

The next thing to note is that in step 4 you choose New Page. There is no option in the drop-down list to choose Next Page, which is the actual type of section break you want. This is a terminology inconsistency in Word's interface. Choosing "New Page" changes the section break to "Next Page."

After applying these steps, the section break type is changed, but no other section-based formatting is affected, just like Marissa wants. The only drawback is that applying the steps to every section in the document (Marissa has 30+ sections) can be rather tedious. If you have a lot of sections to affect, you could use Find and Replace to aid in the changing. Follow these steps:

1. Press Ctrl+H. Word displays the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
2. Switch to the Find tab of the dialog box.
3. In the Find What box, enter ^b. This tells Word you want to find all section breaks.
4. Using the Find In drop-down list, choose Main Document. Word selects all the section breaks and informs you how many it found.
5. Click the Close button to dismiss the Find and Replace dialog box. All the section breaks are still selected.
6. Display the Layout tab of the ribbon. (In some versions of Word, this may be called the Page Layout tab.)
7. Click the small icon at the bottom-right of the Page Setup group. Word displays the Page Layout dialog box.
8. Display the Layout tab of the dialog box.
9. Using the Section Start drop-down list, choose New Page.
10. Make sure the Apply To drop-down list is set to Selected Sections.
11. Click OK to dismiss the dialog box. Word changes all the section breaks to Next Page.

The only difference in these steps and the first-presented steps is that you are using Find and Replace to select all of the sections in the document. This allows you to affect all of the section breaks at on time. This can also be the major drawback to this approach—all the section breaks are changed to Next Page. It wasn't clear from Marissa's problem description if she had other types of section breaks (such as Odd Page or Even Page) that she wanted to not change. If that is the case, then perhaps the best approach is to use a macro to do the type changes. The following should do the trick:

Sub ConvertSections()
    Dim sec As Section
    Dim sMsg As String
    Dim J As Long
    Dim K As Long

    If ActiveDocument.Sections.Count > 1 Then
        K = 0
        For J = 2 To ActiveDocument.Sections.Count
            Set sec = ActiveDocument.Sections(J)

            ' If the section starts with a Continuous break, change it
            If sec.PageSetup.SectionStart = wdSectionContinuous Then
                sec.PageSetup.SectionStart = wdSectionNewPage
                K = K + 1
            End If
        Next J
        sMsg = "Converted " & K & " continuous section breaks."
    Else
        sMsg = "There is only a single section in this document."
    End If

    MsgBox sMsg, vbInformation
End Sub

This macro first checks to ensure that there are at least two sections in your document. If there are, then it steps through the sections and changes all Continuous section breaks (wdSectionContinuous) to Next Page section breaks (wdSectionNewPage). Other types of section breaks are not affected.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13981) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365.