Moving/Reorganizing Pages in Microsoft Word
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See also: How can I move/reorganize pages within a Microsoft Word document?How can I keep together content that is logically linked - should be kept together?How can I delete pages?
Introduction:The question is sometimes asked: How can I move pages within a Microsoft Word document? The brief answer is: Copy and Paste. The full answer is more complex and requires an understanding of how Word looks at text and does not see pages. Word does not understand pages. It doesn't use pages, despite appearances to the contrary.Word is a text-flow program where text is set in a certain page only at print time. Using complex macros, you can manipulate pages, but that is seldom satisfactory. Luckily, Word 2010 and later have a key feature called the Navigation Pane that will let you move logical sections of your document easily. You can structure a document so that each page is a logical section, using the built-in Heading Styles. See Why use Microsoft Word’s built-in heading styles? by Shauna Kelly. See also:
Overview:Warning: Earlier versions of Word have a feature similar to the Navigation Pane called the Document Map. Do not use that tool to reorganize a document. Doing so may result in document corruption. You can use Outline View in earlier versions to move parts of a document delimited by heading styles. The Navigation Pane is what pops up when you press Ctrl+F for Find, except it is then in the found text mode rather than the headings mode. You can click the tab for headings if the Navigation Pane is already showing, or you can turn it on using the View Tab. You want to be using the Headings tab in the Navigation Pane, not the Page tab.
Navigation Pane Tabs in Word 2010 Later versions use the words instead of icons: Headings | Pages | Results To use this feature to move pages, you must start each page with one of the built-in headings or at least a custom heading that has an Outline Level applied.
Doing this gives Word logical container for your page. To move a page (logical section) that starts with Heading 1 (or whichever style you chose to mark the start of a page) in Word 2010 and later using the Navigation Pane:
To move a page (logical section) that starts with a Heading Style in Word 2013 and later using Collapse/Expand
To move a page (logical section that starts with an outline-level paragraph, you can use Outline View
Related - Keeping logically related content togetherPlease read the material above, for background. Again, Word does not understand what a page is! Often you want to keep a few paragraphs of text together, do not want it unnecessarily split across multiple pages. This can be done with paragraph formatting. The method above starts pages with a style that contains Page-Break-Before paragraph formatting. Logical ideas, though, do not need to begin a page. If you want to be able to move this as a logical unit to another page, the best way to do so is to start it with a heading style, likely one of the built-in heading styles. That style will have an Outline level and will be set to "Keep lines together" and "Keep with the next" paragraph. The last paragraph of your logically related content should have the paragraph formatting of "Keep lines together" but not "Keep with next." The paragraphs between the heading and the last paragraph should have formatting of both "Keep with next " and "Keep lines together." Ideally, you want to do all of this formatting using Paragraph styles with the appropriate formatting. There should be no empty paragraphs. Do any spacing between paragraphs as part of the "space before" and "space after" paragraph formatting settings in the styles. This formatting will keep the logical section together if it can all fit on one page and should start a page with the heading style. The built-in Heading styles have default formatting to keep the heading paragraph on the same page as the following paragraph. Beginning with Word 2013, you can also move text under an Outline-level paragraph within the document by collapsing the text under that, and then cutting and pasting. The collapsed text is moved along with the Outline-level paragraph. Outlining in Word Related - Deleting PagesThe same principles apply. Word does not understand pages! Please read the first part of this web page. You can select the text on a page and delete it. If your pages are organized using the built-in Heading styles, you can use the Navigation Pane's tab for headings and completely delete everything under a heading. You cannot click on a page in the Page tab, though, and delete it. That tab is strictly for navigation, not making changes. (PowerPoint slides are individual units and you can manipulate those in slide view.) For deleting blank page problems, see Deleting “Blank” Pages by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP.
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