Extra page space on one page only that cannot be removed

[Ralph D via OfficeKB.com]

I have a user who is using word 2003. The Document she created is faily long,
but on one page there is extra space above where her paragraph starts. If she
deletes from the the start of the paragraph, it will move it to the previous
page. Side margins are set ok and if she moves them down, her whole paragraph
moves to keeping the extra space in tact. I did notice that when moved to
normal mode from print mode, there is a thin dotted line right above the
start of her paragraph, but it does not say what it is and I cannot remove it.
Any ideas?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

There is a manual page break above the paragraph in question. If this was
inserted using Ctrl+Enter, it will be so labeled. If it appears to be an
ordinary soft page break, check the paragraph formatting for the "Page break
before" property. The paragraph also has some Space Before, which would
ordinarily be suppressed at the top of a page but is retained after a manual
page break. The space can be removed (via Format | Paragraph) or the
behavior can be changed: on the Compatibility tab of Tools | Options, check
the box for "Suppress Space Before after a hard page or column break."