I have the same problem described here and I've been using word for many years. Lets say your have a heading called "Argument 1" and you want to have your Footer (notice I DID NOT SAY FOOTNOTE) say "Page 1" Followed by "Argument 1", following pages should
change just the page number until the "Argument 2" starts", at which point I want the Footer to change to "Page N" followed by "Argument 1 / Argument 2", followed by "Page N+1" and "Argument 2" until Argument 2 ends.
One would think that Continuous Section Breaks at each page requiring a Footnote Transition would do this, and most of the time it does, however usually somewhere in the document "Continuous Section Breaks" start acting like "New Page Section Breaks", forcing
my next argument to start on a new page for no reason I can figure out - in spite of lots of trying - and leaving most of a page blank.
It would be very nice if I could just put my footers in by hand, and forget section breaks. They frequently do not work correctly in complex documents and I find myself building my documents around what appear to be significant bugs in word, rather than
building my document with word.
I always manage, but its very time consuming. A few times I have had to give up, and it usually occurs (I've noticed) if the line ends right on the margin edge before where I want to insert a section break and the line is proportionally spaced followed
by a new line where the break must occur. Its as though the section breaks are messed with by the formatting of a line before it somehow. Most of my paragraphs are numbered.
I am familiar with unlinking Footers, and usually do that early in my writing effort.