How to Make a New Page Break in Microsoft Word

Do you need to make a new page? If you are writing a long document with chapters or sections, you will likely want to start a new chapter or section on a new page. Here are a variety of ways to do so.

The obvious method is to use the menu, but which menu and what is a new page called?

Page Break – a page break creates a new page after the insertion point.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• PC running MS Word (or other word processing, desktop publishing software)

1. Place your cursor at the end of your text, or at a point just before the text you want to put on a new page. Note that your insertion cursor (which looks like a capital i) should be blinking at the point where you want the new page. Do not have any text selected when you are ready to create a new page (because it would be replaced with the page break).

2. 
    
   Insert Break window

   On the INSERT menu, the first entry is “Break”. When you choose this option you will see a small window with a few more options. The default is “Page Break” so you can just hit ‘enter’ or click “OK” to accept it. Use the menu and window option if you like, or the sequence Alt, I, B, Enter will do the same actions more quickly.

3. Better yet, learn the keyboard combination Ctrl Enter (hold down the Ctrl key and tap the Enter key). This works in almost any word processing or desktop publishing application that runs in Windows.

4. 
    
   Page Break looks like this

   A page break will look like a dotted line across the bottom of your (first) page with the words “Page Break” centered. In Page Layout view you won’t see any further text on the (first) page, and will have to scroll down to a second page to see the new text. In Normal view, the page break line will show just above a paragraph mark for your next page, or the text before which you chose to insert the page break.

Tips & Warnings

• Using page break gives you much more control over how your document looks. You can choose not to start a new idea at the bottom of a page and have the paragraph continue on the second page, but instead begin at the top of a fresh page.
• If you are creating a multi-page document that will be printed, be sure to put page numbers in a header or footer.
• If you had text selected and find it is missing when you insert a page break, use the old stand-by Ctrl Z to undo this mistake, then with no text selected, insert the page break.

Resources

• Learning Word #1 - File Menu
• Learning Word #2 - Selecting Text
• Learning Word #3 - Edit Menu (pt 1)
• Learning Word #4 - Edit Menu (pt 2)
• Learning Word #5 - View Menu
• How to Make a Text Box in Word
• How to Format a Text Box in Word
• How to Use Function Keys in Word

[athome]

on 6/4/2009 Wow, you really know a lot about using Microsoft Word and making a new page break. Very useful. 5*