[Steve H[_2_]]

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 €œthats 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 €œdesign€� is. I dont think it makes me a €œpoor workman€� to offer
criticism, but if you think it does, then so be it. Microsofts products
like Office and Internet Explorer are popular because of Windows bundling and
Microsofts business practices. Word is the €œdefault€� 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.