How Do I Make a Table in Word Continue Onto the Next Page

Based on a  writing tip I wrote for my work colleagues.

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Sometimes a table or a table row can shift to a new page and you don't know why or how to get it back. There are several possible reasons a table or table row might do this, and several ways to get the table or row back to where you want it.

Table rows

There are three main reasons for a table row to start on a new page:

• Table setting for 'Allow row to break across pages': Select the table row, right-click and select Table properties. Go to the Row tab, and see if Allow row to break across pages is checked or not. If it's not, a row with a lot of information will start on a new page instead of splitting across the page break.

• Paragraph setting for forcing a row to remain with the following row or paragraph: Select the first table row that's on the new page, go to the Home tab, and click the tiny little arrow icon in the bottom right corner of the Paragraph group (see image below) to open the Paragraph dialog box. Go to the Line and Page Breaks tab and see if Keep with next and/or Keep lines together are checked. If so, that means that the row you selected is set to stay with the following paragraph, whether that's another row or a normal paragraph.

• Paragraph setting for forcing a row onto a new page: Select the first table row that's on the new page, go to the Home tab, and click the tiny little arrow icon in the bottom right corner of the Paragraph group to open the Paragraph dialog box. Go to the Line and Page Breaks tab and see if Page break before is checked. If so, that's what's forcing the row to the next page.

Entire table

Now, what about tables starting on a new page when they probably shouldn't? Again, there are several reasons for this occurring:

• Hard page break or empty lines (paragraphs) inserted in front of the table: Delete the page break and/or empty paragraphs and see if the table moves back.

• 'Section break (Next page)' inserted in front of the table: BEWARE! Deleting section breaks can mess up page orientation and/or headers/footer. If you do delete a section break, check that nothing else was changed on the pages on front of the table AND after it (check the page orientation and headers/footers); if it all goes pear-shaped, immediately undo the deletion of the section break.

• Paragraph setting for forcing the header row onto a new page: Select the first table row that's on the new page, go to the Home tab, and click the tiny little arrow icon in the bottom right corner of the Paragraph group to open the Paragraph dialog box. Go to the Line and Page Breaks tab and see if Page break before is checked. If so, that's what's forcing the row to the next page.

• Paragraph setting for forcing one or more rows to remain with the following row or paragraph: Select the entire table, go to the Home tab, and click the tiny little arrow icon in the bottom right corner of the Paragraph group to open the Paragraph dialog box. Go to the Line and Page Breaks tab and see if Keep with next and/or Keep lines together are checked. If so, that means that table is set to stay with the following paragraph. If either of these check boxes is shaded, it means some of the rows are set to 'Keep with next' and/or 'Keep lines together' so click the check boxes until they are clear.

One way to check if there's a paragraph setting that's controlling the table row(s) is to have your formatting marks turned on and look for a little black square at the far left of a table's row(s). That black square indicates that a paragraph setting (not a table setting) applies to the row(s). For more details on turning on your formatting marks and the black square, see:

• https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/word-show-all-marks/
• https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/word-table-row-goes-to-new-page/

[Links last checked September 2014]

holtolaxby1947.blogspot.com

Source: https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/word-table-or-table-row-goes-to-next-page/

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