"Word 2007 Space: How Word Handles Space Before a Heading?"

This article shows you how to control Word 2007 Space after a hard page or column break.

If you take advantage of Word 2007 styles in your documents, they can make your formatting much more consistent and easier than formatting manually. You can define styles for all sorts of elements in your documents.

One of the most common document elements to format is different heading levels. When formatting headings, it is not unusual to set them off from surrounding text by adding additional space before them. Word lets you do this in the style definition for the heading. You can specify virtually any amount of additional space before the heading that you want.

When the heading style includes additional space before the paragraph, you may be surprised when Word sometimes fails to add that expected space. For example, when the heading appears right after a page break or a column break, Word normally doesn't include that extra space. Instead, the heading appears right up at the top of the page or column.

How to solve this problem when those paragraphs appear after a page/column break is actually a little setting in Word.

To make adjustments to the Word 2007 space

• Click the Office Button and then click Word Options.
• From the Word Options dialog box displayed, click Advanced at the left of the dialog box.
• Scroll to the bottom of the options in the dialog box.

• Click the plus sign to the left of Layout Options. Word shows a long list of compatibility options it can use.
• Scroll through the list of options until you find the option called Suppress Space Before after a hard page or column break.
• If the check mark beside this option is selected, then Word ignores your "space before" specification when the paragraph with that specification occurs right after a page break or a column break. If it is not selected, then your "space before" setting is honored in these instances.
• Click OK.

Note: If your heading style specifies space before the heading, and that heading naturally falls at the top of a page, Word suppresses that extra space, no matter what. The reason is because Word "eats up" the extra space, as if it was really at the bottom of the previous page.

Related Topics:

How to Turn Off Automatic Bulleted and Numbered Lists in Word 2007?

Guide to Changing the Word 2007 Language Settings Options.

Disabling or Enabling the Mini Toolbar in Word 2007.

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