Compatibility settings are document-specific, and the ones you want a

[ ] Don't use HTML paragraph auto spacing.

[X] Suppress Space Before after a hard page or column break.

Space Before is automatically suppressed after natural page breaks. There is
no provision for suppressing it after section breaks.

The other Compatibility options have to do with extra line spacing (not
Space Before); you can experiment with the effects of these, but unless
you're using Multiple or Exact line spacing, this is not an issue.

--
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.

"Mike B" wrote in message
...
(Word 2003)
Hi. I'm aware of the compatibity options tab for controlling space
before/after paragraphs but there are so many check boxes relating to this
attribute (Word 5 for Mac, Word perfect 5 etc) that I can't seem to get
the
combination that works how I wish. namely:

1. suppress space before after ANY kind of page break, to give consistent
top margins
2. don't ever add the space after & space before. Use only the largest of
both values.

which checkboxes to check to always get these results? and are these
compatibility settings global or are they specific to document/template?
Thanks
--
MB.