I'm trying to organize my novel into chapters and wondering - does anyone know how to make a each new chapter start on a new page?? I mean automatically rather than manually, so that however you organize text, spacing or whatever, 'Chapter 2', for example, will always shift itself to a new page. I used to know this and now I've forgotten.

you go to insert and put in insert page break, after the last line of your chapter.

Then it automatically skips to a new page and will stay a new page no matter if you add more text above the break.

Is that what you meant?

Yes, i think so! Except I want it to recognize the chapter heading as the place to start the new page, rather than the last line of the previous chapter (if that makes sense), but i can fiddle around with that!.

Thanks!

The best way to do this is to use a Word style (say, Heading 1), and alter that style so that it page breaks before. The way you do this depends on the version of Word you're using. If you've got Word 2000 or 2003, there's an article all about using styles on my website: http://www.alexhazel.me.uk. That same article is in the archive here, somewhere, but I can't remember where.

You basically need to find modify the style you're using for the chapter heading, go to the Paragraph settings, and look on the "Line and Page Breaks" tab. There, you'll find a checkbox labelled "Page break before". If you check that, Word will insert a page break before any paragraph that is of that style.

Alex

<Added>

...need to modify...

I'll try that, thanks!

One thing to remember: if you do alter the chapter heading's style to force an automatic page break, don't insert a manual one before it. If you do that, you'll end up with a blank page between each chapter, because Word will insert the automatic page break regardless.

(Understanding styles is key to using Word. For a thorough description of how to use them in Word 2000 have a look here: http://www.alexhazel.me.uk/wordinst.html. If you have Word 2003, they work in a pretty similar way, although the process of getting to them is slightly different. In Word 2007, the user interface has been changed so drastically that some features of Styles are no longer so easy to use. I haven't yet worked out how to apply outline numbering to a style, for example, despite having done this many times with earlier versions of Word.)

Alex

I use page break as FloraPost suggested. To put the break at the start of a chapter, just click to the immediate left of the first word of the new chapter, as if you were going to type in another word, and then go to insert/break/pagebreak.

That will insert a manual page break in front of the chapter concerned (although you could then update the style to effect this change for all paragraphs of the same style). Popsicle was asking about automatic page breaks, which are achieved as I have described.

You would have to be using a specific style for the headings, for the automatic page breaking to be applied only to the headings. If you are using the default "Normal" style for everything, and simply reformatting as required, setting "page break before" for that style would result in every single paragraph having a page break before it.

Alex