The style carryover is the primary issue. Note, however, that manual page
breaks of any kind (even paragraphs with "Page break before") are best
avoided except in cases where a given style or paragraph should *always*
start a new page. Manual page breaks can wreak havoc when documents are
reflowed for a different printer (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TextReflow.htm).

One caution about "Page break before": if your document will be used by
others, this "invisible" formatting can cause serious confusion for
less-sophisticated Word users, who won't understand why the page is breaking
when there is no apparent manual page break (they are also confused by the
use of "Keep with next" and "Keep lines together" to control text flow).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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all may benefit.

"Trey Shaffer" wrote in message
...
Thanks to Suzanne and Charles...

I didn't realize the manual breaks were handled differently, and I tend to
use them quite a bit.

Charles,
Would you care to elaborate on other issues with manual breaks? One I
have
noticed is that they somehow link the Style of the paragraph following the
break with the paragraph preceding the break. This is a problem that is
solved with your suggestion about modifying the paragraph style to include
the Break Before...



"Trey Shaffer" wrote in message
...
I think I know the answer to this, but just want to make sure...

Word Version 2003/SP2.

I am familiar with the Paragraph formatting dialog, in particular the
Space Before and Space After settings.

What I would like is a way to eliminate "Space Before" for the first
paragraph on every page. This is particularly an issue for headings
where
I tend to use larger Space Before values.

I'm not sure exactly how the "Auto" setting in the spacing parameter
works, but it still inserts spacing at the top of the page.

This could be a "wish list" item for a later version.

Perhaps there is a VBA script to do this? To be truly useful, it would
have to restore the Space Before value to a paragraph if it was removed
once, being at the top of a page, and later reformatted away from the
top
of page.

Your thoughts appreciated

--
Trey Shaffer