I can confirm the issue. It seems that Word just isn't up to calculating
where the page breaks fall when the line width changes between one page and
the next. I've learned to live with it in the few templates I have that use
frames or text boxes this way.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Mary" wrote in message
...
I'm using Word 2003 on Windows XP. For some time, widow/orphan control has
not been working in documents based on our corporate templates. If text
(and
styles) is copied from a document based on one of these templates into a
document based on Normal.dot, then the text behaves as it should, i.e.,
widow/orphan works as expected.

When I previously posted this question a few months ago, it was suggested
that the issue might be having too many paragraphs formatted "keep with
next." That is not the case as this happens with just a page or two of
text
with no special paragraph formatting. However, I'm now fairly sure that
the
problem is being caused by a frame in the footer. The footers of all these
templates are set up in such a way that there is some text on the left and
on the right there is a frame containing the company logo and some
additional text (copyright notice, page number and date). The frame
appears
to be aligned with the right margin and the top of the header area.
However,
if the frame is deleted, the text behaves itself, i.e., widow/orphan
works.

Since I don't own the templates, it's not an option for me to revise all
of
them by removing the frames in the footer. But is there something in the
frame formatting that could be changed so it doesn't interfere with the
text
on the page? The frame is formatted as follows: 2.5 inches high, 1.18
inches
wide, horizontal position right relative to margin, distance from text
0.13
inches, vertical position 9.83 inches relative to margin, distance from
text
0 inches. Move with text and lock anchor are unchecked. Document margins
set
to one inch on all sides and paper size is US letter.

My workaround to date has been to used Keep Lines Together to prevent ugly
paragraph breaks, but this is time-consuming in long documents and looks
bad
in long paragraphs.Any suggestions please.