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Hello. My name is Breann and today I will be showing you how section breaks can be useful
in the Windows version of Microsoft Word 2007. I’ve already opened Microsoft Word and opened
a file that I had saved. To show the effectiveness of section breaks, I’ve opened my research
paper from a previous class. Let’s say I want to add a graph to my document,
but the graph I’ve found it needs to be on a page with landscape instead of portrait
orientation because the graph is wider than it is tall. Many people think that in order
for a page to have a different orientation, the pages have to be in separate documents,
but with section breaks, we can change orientation right in the middle of a document and then
change back again. Let’s put our cursor where we want the graph to go. Then we go
up to the menu bar at the top of Word and click on the “Page Layout” tab. This will
show you various options for how you can set up your page. In the “Page Setup” section,
click on breaks which will show you a pull-down menu displaying the different kinds of breaks
you might use. In this case, we’re going to pick “Next Page Break” located under
the section break portion of the menu. This type of section break will take you to the
next page where you can format differently than previous pages. Here we will insert the
graph. Since we want this page to be landscape, we’ll go back to the “Page Layout” menu
and click on orientation to landscape the page. Now, you must add another page break
after the graph so that you can re-orient the rest of your document back to portrait
pages and you can continue writing. So, now that we have a graph in our document,
maybe we decide that we have a long quote that we want to stand out from the rest of
the print. You could indent the whole paragraph, or you could chose to put the quote into two
columns. I’m going to show you two ways you can do this. If you’re typing your document
and decide you want two columns, put you’re cursor where you want to begin and we’ll
pick a “Continuous Section Break” this time. This will allow us to change the formatting
on the current page without changing the rest of the formatting or adding a new or separate
page as we did before. We’ll go back to “Page Layout” in the tabs at the top where
you can, again, find the “Breaks” menu. After you put in the continuous section break,
you’ll need to select the number of column you want. Right next to the “Breaks” menu,
you’ll see the “Columns” menu where you can do this. I’m going to select two
columns. Now you can begin to type and the words will show in the first column. When
you have the desired text in that column, go back to the “Breaks” menu and chose
a “Column Break”. This will allow you to begin typing in the next column. When you’re
finished with the column layout, you will need to put in another continuous section
break so that you can continue typing in one column instead of two.
There is another way to do this if you already have the information typed out like I do in
my paper. All you need to do is highlight the section that you want put into two columns.
Go to the “Page Layout” tab and click on the “Columns” menu to select the number
of columns you want. The program will automatically insert the necessary section breaks to format
this section. Now let’s move onto a subject that often
troubles students. Do you ever realize that you have headers and footers that need to
be different for different sections of the same document but you can’t figure out how
to change them? So in this case you probably resorted to typing each section in a different
Word document so that you can format the headers and footers differently. Then you need to
remember where page numbers need to start for each document. Plus, if one document’s
page numbers change because you add or delete text from a page, you have to redo the numbers
on every subsequent section. Well now you can insert a section break and format various
headers and footers within the same document.
As you can see in my paper, I have different sections within the document. I’ve decided
that I want a different header for each section so that the section name is also on the top
of each page. In this case, I’m also going to begin each section on a new page which
I can do in one easy step. First I’ll position my cursor at the beginning of a new section.
Then I’ll add a section break to start on a new page. As you can see, the new section
automatically went to the next page. You can see though that this page has the same header
still. Let’s go back to the header design tab to find out why. If you look in the “Navigation”
section, you can see that there is an orange box highlighting “Link to Previous”. This
means that whatever settings the previous section has will also appear in this section.
Since we don’t want that, we’ll go ahead and unmark that by clicking it. This section
has to do with the definition of accelerated learners, so I’m going to abbreviate this
by putting “Definition” in the header on the right side of the page. I’m going
to do the same thing for the next section. Since I already inserted a continuous section
break here, I can change my header without having to add another section break. All we
have to do is type in something different in place of “Definition” in the header.
Before you do this though, don’t forget to unlink from the previous section. Then,
in this case I’ll type in Characteristics. Now you have a new heading. As you can see,
even though we’re changing the words in the heading, the page numbers stay consistent.
This is nice because you can add and subtract information without having to worry if you’re
page numbers are correct. Now that you know how to use these section
breaks, you’ll be able to write professional papers without the hassle of using many documents
and having to keep track of everything. You’re whole paper will be in one place, easy to
edit and print!