Can't edit headers/footers

C

Coder Droid

This is seriously frustrating and I'm about to pull my remaining hair
out.

I have a long document with a couple dozen sections or so. Each section
has different first and different odd/even. As I get farther and farther
down the document, clicking "View Header and Footer" jumps to a previous
page, and sometimes a previous section.

So let's say I'm on page 311 in section 18. The header is all screwed
up. While on that page, I select "View Header and Footer" and suddenly
I'm on a totally different page, back in section 17.

Now, the STRANGE thing is that when I look at the page number: it says
I'm on page 311. And the page 311 I *used* to be on, is now 326.
Furthermore, it looks perfectly fine: just the way I defined it. When
leave edit mode, I'm back on the original 311 and the header's screwed
up again.

It's very reminiscent of "view hidden" throwing off all the pages.
Except that I'm not viewing anything hidden. I just want to fix the
header!

ARRRRGH.

Anyone? Anything?

--cd
 
C

Coder Droid

Sorry ... I forgot this is Word 2003. I've done an "Open and Repair" on
the document, which found a couple things wrong, but the header/footer
oddity remains.

I thought ditching Word 2000 in favor of 2003 would make things better.
Last time, I had to remove all automatic numbering from a document,
since it would number things like 1, 2, 14, 15, 12, 3, 4, 5 .... I'd fix
it, and it'd be fine for a while, then it'd be screwed up again. Plus,
the errors would pop up randomly all over the place.

Why do I keep sending my money to Bill? There should be a 12-step
program for people like me.

--cd
 
C

Charles Kenyon

Word's autonumbering requires special care. If that care is given, it works
fine.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html


--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.
 
C

Coder Droid

Word's autonumbering requires special care. If that care is given, it
works
fine.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. However, my original post wasn't about numbering
(that was my bad: I shouldn't have given another example replying to my
own original post.) The issue is still the inability to edit
headers/footers.

I think I've worked around it at this point by deleting the entire
section (which made a lot of this section's attributes automatically get
applied to the previous section --- GRRRR). So, after fixing up the
previous section, re-did the bad section from scratch (I didn't want to
take the chance of cutting/pasting the bad stuff back in).

It's kinda working. I changed my even header to contain the term
"Character Sets". I went back about ten minutes later, and it was
changed to just "C". I've changed it back again to "Character Sets" so
we'll see how it goes.

The root of the original problem still remains. When I "View Headers and
Footers" it repaginates the document wrongly. It's almost like the
header/footer metrics are changing in edit mode. Here's a more specific
example.

Page 16: has a bulleted list at the bottom of the page, and a page
number in the footer. When I edit the footer, the last bulleted item
jumps to page 17. When I'm done editing, it jumps back to page 16, where
it belongs.

I think this issue propogates throughout the entire document. So that
when I edit page 311, I suddenly find page 311 is now page 326.

FRUSTRATING.

--cd
 
M

Margaret Aldis

Just a thought, but do you have a lot of possibly incompatible pagination
rules (like too many "keep with next"s) ? If so, Word's constant fiddling
with the pagination in different views could be because it is going around
in circles trying to accommodate you.
 
C

Coder Droid

Just a thought, but do you have a lot of possibly incompatible
pagination rules (like too many "keep with next"s) ? If so, Word's
constant fiddling with the pagination in different views could be
because it is going around in circles trying to accommodate you.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... interesting thought. I don't *think* so... but it's hard to
tell. I'd like to start with a fresh document, then gradually bring
things in from the bad one and see where it breaks (maybe when I'm not
under a tremendous time crunch).

I'll double check styles and formatting to see if I see anything that
might be conflicting.

--cd
 
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