How do I remove returns from my Word Document and replace them with page breaks?

Question

I'm an author of two published books. About 8 months ago I was commissioned to write a new book by my publisher. The book is almost finished. In order to format the book so that the chapters, and special sections, will start at the beginning of certain pages, I used the return key to "push" the text onto the next page. Yesterday, someone told me that I must use "page breaks" to do this.

When I re-open my book file for editing, the formatting is a mess, and the chapters are either starting in the middle of the page, or moving backwards. In other words, they are not staying in place.

Is there any way to "lock" the pages so that the chapters begin exactly where I want them to? Or do I have to go back and delete all the "returns"? If I delete all my "returns", I will have to work hundreds of more hours on formatting.

Can I select which "returns" I want to delete? For example, normally I don't use more than 1 or 2 "returns" in all the book - except for where I pushed the entire chapter onto a new page. What is the command to select which "returns" I want to delete? And then after I do that, what is the correct command for a "page break"?

After spending 8 months of writing, sometimes for 13 hours a day, I don't want to be bogged down by endless hours of re-formatting. Please step me through the process that can most easily and quickly fix my book, to remove the excess "returns" and to insert the proper "page breaks".

Thanks. Please only reply if you are an expert user of Microsoft Word.

? · Accepted Answer

When opening Word docs on different computers, your format will break. It's unfortunate and makes working in the program challenging, especially with long documents like yours.

You can do a "Replace", searching for hard returns and replacing them with page breaks by going to 
Replace > More > Special 
(These menus may be named a bit different depending on your version of Word).

What I would do would be to search for instances of 3 or more returns and replace them with manual page breaks. That would be:
Find what: ^p^p^p
Replace with: ^m
You could then either do a "Replace All" so that it goes through the entire document quickly, but you would risk page breaks where you may not want them. I would do a 'Find next' to toggle to each instance one by one, make sure it's something I want to replace with a page break, and then click 'Replace'. It's slower than 'Replace All', but safer, and faster than looking for them manually.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

Trending News

How do I remove returns from my Word Document and replace them with page breaks?

1 Answer