Word began separating Next Page Section Breaks from Page breaks yesterday, when I have always used them on the same line.

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Word began separating Next Page Section Breaks from Page breaks yesterday, when I have always used them on the same line.

Br. Emmanuel Labrise 70

I am an independent author and self-publisher and use Microsoft Word 365 to produce my book manuscripts and other materials. I have always used a Page Break and a Next Page Section Break on the same line to end chapters (sections) without any problem, but yesterday I saw that Word is separating them and pushing the Next Page Section Breaks onto the next page when they should be on the same line with the Page Break on the previous page. This has never happened before in all the years I have been working with Word. In addition, I emailed one of my documents to a public computer at the public library where I come to do my work every day and viewed that manuscript on their desktop version of Word, and it looks fine. The problem, I surmise, is not a setting in the file / document itself, but how Word 365 is reading it. Is this a bug in Word 365? How do I fix it?

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Answer 1

John Korchok 236.1K Volunteer Moderator

Word renders breaks differently in current versions. Most likely, the library computer has not been updated.

To report a bug, please use Help>Feedback>Report a problem in Word.

There is no reason to use a page break and next page section break in conjunction with one another. Use one or the other: a page break to create a new page or a next page section break to create a new page and section at the same time.

Br. Emmanuel Labrise 70 Reputation points

2026-07-01T18:17:15.9+00:00

Thank you for your reply. :) I know a bit about Word (at least to do what I do), but I did not know about Help>Feedback>Report a problem. I just sent them a modified version of my initial post above and checked the "Yes, you can contact me" option. Thank you! :)

I am learning that there is no need for both a Page Break (PB) and a Next Page Continuous Break (NPCB) in 2026, something I did not know. When I started writing books about three years ago, I was working on a desktop version of Word 2016 and there was a reason why I had to use both, but I cannot remember now what it was. I believe I still have a reason in 2026 to use both together because I work with five translators and I know that not all (if any) use 365. I know my French translator uses LibreOffice and then gives me the manuscript in Word 2010 (because we had compatibility issues with .odt Libre files). I think if I delete all of the PBs and only use NPSBs that it will be an issue on the versions of Word they use.

I have been experimenting today with a manuscript and found that if I place the cursor at the beginning of the NPSB and then press Return (Enter button), it pulls the NPSB back to the PB on the previous page. It also creates a Return Paragraph between the two, but I do not think this will matter (not sure, though). If this works, it means that I can manually correct all of the documents (in every language) and still have them compatible with older versions of Word used by my translators. If you see any problems with this course of action, please advise me.

I will wait for awhile to hear back from Customer Feedback Support before I do this, though. Maybe it is a bug that can be corrected.

Word 365 mishap 4.png
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