[David]

Finally! An easy to use and understandable answer!

Thanks

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

The alternative to reformatting after deleting the section break is to copy
the formatting of the next-to-last section into the last section before
deleting the break. If it's just a matter of margins and other settings in
Page Setup, then this is done quite easily:

1. Place the insertion point in the next-to-last section.

2. Open Page Setup. Without making any changes, click OK.

3. Now move the insertion point to the last section and press F4. This will
copy the Page Setup settings you just made in the previous section.

For an example of how this works, see
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/DetachEnvelope.htm.

If there are headers and footers involved, you'll need to unlink the last
section so that it inherits the headers/footers from the previous section.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Steve H" wrote in message
...
Ms. Barnhill -

My question was this: is there a way to delete a section break and keep
the
formatting in the preceding section without having the formatting
automatically changed to match the second, deleted section? Based on my
own
experience, the only way I knew how to do it was to re-format the section
after deleting the page break.

I read through the entire linked document again. While you are correct
that
the article does address this question, it offers no solution other than
what
I have already figured out. Basically, the answer is that there is no way
to
delete a section break without having the formatting of the second section
replace the formatting of the first section.

Now, the article did offer some tricks or (not so very short) shortcuts,
like copying the section break to the end of the next section prior to
deleting the section break. But that is just a trick, as you are still
left
with an unwanted section break. If you then try to delete that unwanted
section break, the formatting change happens anyway. The article offered
another solution, in which you change the formatting of the second section
to
match the formatting of the first section before you delete the section
break. But you still have to reformat, right? Regardless of when you do
it,
the bottom line is that if you want to delete a section break between two
sections with different formats, you are going to have to reformat
something.

Personally, I was hoping that there was some way to change the default
settings so that when deleting a page break, the preceding format is
maintained, which seems a lot more logical to me. However, there is
nothing
in that article or in what you have written that provides any answer to
the
question other than to say "that's just the way it is" while offering some
unsatisfactory shortcuts.

I will acknowledge that the article you linked to did provide an
explanation
about how sections work in Word; I learned a lot and I am grateful. But,
at
the same time, the article left me even more bewildered about how
illogical
this "design" is. I don't think it makes me a "poor workman" to offer
criticism, but if you think it does, then so be it. Microsoft's products
like Office and Internet Explorer are popular because of Windows bundling
and
Microsoft's business practices. Word is the "default" word processing
program, and it has very little to do with the quality of the program
itself.
I can think of several better-designed word processing programs and I
would
use those tools if I could.