Tip #14 [Word]: Use page breaks to paginate your document

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Word files can contain more than one page, everyone knows that. When your text is too long to fit on one page, Word will automatically continue on a second page. But how do you force Word to start at a new page? You would probably want to do this when you are preparing a report with multiple sections, and you want each section to start on a new page of its own.

I have seen my friends press the Enter key (or Return key on Macs), until they reach the end of the current page, so that Word will move on to a new page and they continue typing there. Although this gets the job done, it is not a wise solution because whenever content in the previous page change, the alignment of content in the following pages will shift either upwards or downwards. To see this in action, try typing a few lines on the first page, then press Enter/Return until you reach the second page, and type a few more lines there. Now, select the text on the first page, and change the font size to 30. Can you see the lines on page 2 shift downwards? (click on the animation to enlarge)


The correct way to add a new page, as intended by the developers of Microsoft Word, is to insert a Page Break. A page break is like an indication to Word that you want to start on a new page from where the typing cursor currently is.

To quickly insert a Page Break in Office 2003 and Office 2007, press Ctrl + Enter. If you want to use the menu in Office 2003, it is located at Insert > Break. Choose Page break and click OK. In Office 2007, switch to the Insert tab of the Ribbon and choose Page Break under the Pages group, located on the far left.

In Office 2008 for Mac, it's a totally different story. Strangely, there is no shortcut key to insert a page break (I expected it to be Command + Return or something similar). Instead, you will need to click on Insert > Break > Page Break on the menu. I hope Microsoft will do something about this in the upcoming Office 2010 for Mac, since inserting a page break should be considered as something pretty essential to any word processor, no matter the operating system.

Remember the previous tip on using column layouts for your Word documents? You can force text to begin in the next column by inserting a Columm Break. To do this in Office 2003, Insert > Break, choose Column break and then OK. For Office 2007, switch to the Page Layout tab of the Ribbon, click on Breaks under Page Setup, and choose Column. And for Office 2008 for Mac, it's Insert > Break > Column Break (or Shift + Command + Return).