If you’re creating a long document (such as an outline, report, or thesis), it may be useful to insert section breaks. These breaks split your document into sections, which lay the groundwork for formatting your document. Sections can also come in handy for advanced tasks like creating outlines.

First, place your cursor where you want the section break. Then, click the Insert menu and click Break. You’ll see the dialog pictured to the right.

You can see that section breaks are more complicated than other types of breaks; they have their own set of options in the break dialog box. The option you choose will tell Word where to begin the new section:

-          Next page: The section will start on the next page.

-          Continuous: The section will be continuous with the text before it.

-          Even page:  The section will start on the next even page. (If a blank page needs to be inserted to create this effect, it will not be shown on the screen.

-          Odd page:  The section will start on the next odd page. (If a blank page needs to be inserted to create this effect, it will not be shown on the screen.

Once the section break is inserted, you won’t actually see it (unless you enable document markings, which we’ll cover in the next lesson), but you will be able to apply different formats (such as columns and headers and footers) to each section.

Don’t forget that you can change the section break type by placing your cursor inside the section you want to change, then clicking the File menu and clicking Page Setup. The first drop-down menu in the Layout tab lets you control section break types. You can also suppress endnotes in this section until the end of the document using the Suppress Endnotes checkbox.