Inserting Page Breaks and Blank Pages

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About this lesson

Quickly force a new page at the location you specify and/or add a blank page as well.

Quick reference

Inserting Page Breaks and Blank Pages

Inserting a new page, a blank page, or a page break is a simple process, and using the Pages group is the ideal way to control it.

Graphical user interface, application Description automatically generated with medium confidence

When to use

A page break ends a current page and moves the insertion point to the next page. A clean, blank page can be added with a click of a button.

Instructions:

Note: It is a good practice to click View, Navigation Pane.

This allows you to observe the pages on the left panel.

1. Using the exercise file, click behind the first line of text: "Page 1".

2. On the INSERT ribbon, Pages group, click “Page Break”.

Note: The Navigation Pane shows two pages.

3. Click behind the line of text: "Page 2".

4. On the keyboard, press Ctrl-Enter (or Ctrl-Return).

Note: The Navigation Pane shows three pages.

5. Click behind the line of text: "Page 3".

6. You choose which method to use: the Insert Ribbon

 or the keyboard “Ctrl-Enter”

Note: the Navigation Pane shows four pages.

7. Scroll to Page 2 and click behind the line of text: "Page 2".

8. On the INSERT ribbon, Pages group, click “Blank Page”.

 

The Navigation Pane shows five total pages, with a blank page as Page 3.

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  • 00:04 As we go into the intermediate level of this course, let's just make sure that on
  • 00:08 the View ribbon, you do have a checkmark on Navigation Pane.
  • 00:11 Especially in this lesson, it's really going to help to see the multiple pages
  • 00:15 that pop up and to be able to click around those pages.
  • 00:18 Okay, this lesson is about inserting page breaks and blank pages.
  • 00:22 This is located on the Insert ribbon.
  • 00:24 Far left-hand side is a Pages group, with Cover Page, our next lesson,
  • 00:29 Blank Page, and Page Break.
  • 00:31 Notice when I flipped my mouse on Page Break, a tooltip comes up and
  • 00:35 says Ctrl + Return or Ctrl + Enter on some keyboards.
  • 00:38 It's the same button but may be labeled differently depending on your keyboard.
  • 00:42 Let's go ahead and come over to our Exercise page and notice click Insert,
  • 00:47 Pages group, Page Break right here.
  • 00:49 So place your insertion point where you want the page break to land.
  • 00:53 And the problem with the Pages group Page Break is I have to travel a long ways to
  • 00:56 get up there, all right?
  • 00:57 So I've got my insertion point,
  • 01:00 moving my mouse way to the top left, clicking Page Break.
  • 01:04 And you can see on the Navigation page, Page 2 popped up.
  • 01:07 When I click Page 2, it re-centers on the screen,
  • 01:10 which also is easier than having me scroll to re-center.
  • 01:14 Let's do this again, but let's use the keyboard command Ctrl + Enter or
  • 01:18 Ctrl + Return.
  • 01:19 Place your insertion point at the end of the line.
  • 01:21 Find those buttons on your keyboard and press Ctrl + Enter.
  • 01:24 And there we have it, everything pushed down to Page 3.
  • 01:28 I can click on the Page 3 in my navigation pane, it will re-center on the screen.
  • 01:33 Let's go ahead and push in a blank page, right here.
  • 01:36 So please your insertion point right here, come up to the Insert ribbon, Blank Page.
  • 01:41 Now, at this point, it does not offer a tooltip, so we do have to go up and
  • 01:46 use that button.
  • 01:47 I'll go ahead and click Blank Page and
  • 01:49 observe what happens on the navigation panel.
  • 01:52 Notice an entire blank page is here, still has my header, still has my footer, but
  • 01:57 there is absolutely no text.
  • 01:58 Let's scroll down again, and notice we have Page 5.
  • 02:03 So Page 4 will be the blank page inserted above.
  • 02:07 Page 5 is this last page of the exercise.
  • 02:10 Well, let's take a look at those page breaks.
  • 02:12 How do we get rid of those things if we want to recombine pages?
  • 02:16 Well, we simply turn on the Show/Hide Codes to see the markers.
  • 02:20 It's on the Home ribbon and it's this button.
  • 02:22 So I'll click on the Home ribbon, find the button right over here,
  • 02:27 a little Show/Hide button.
  • 02:29 It's my highest recommendation that you add that to your Quick Access Toolbar.
  • 02:32 So with a right-click, notice it says Add to QAT.
  • 02:37 Mine is grayed out because it's already on my QAT.
  • 02:40 All right, let's go ahead and turn that button on.
  • 02:43 And as you can see, a bunch of little polka dots are between my words,
  • 02:47 those are space bars.
  • 02:48 And anything that looks like a paragraph mark, well, that's the Enter key,
  • 02:53 press Enter.
  • 02:53 Notice I do also have the command, it is literally the Ctrl+Shift+8.
  • 02:59 Ctrt+Shift+8 will toggle them on and off, Ctrl+Shift+8.
  • 03:04 Is that worth memorizing?
  • 03:05 I think so.
  • 03:07 But if you already have it just on your QAT, that's just as quick, turn it on,
  • 03:11 turn it off.
  • 03:12 Well, why did I have to do that?
  • 03:13 Because now, it will show us our page breaks.
  • 03:16 And I can select a page break and hit Delete.
  • 03:20 Scroll up again, find the next page break, hit Delete.
  • 03:24 Scroll up again, you see?
  • 03:26 When you can see where those page breaks actually are,
  • 03:29 it helps you understand what's happening with your document.
  • 03:32 If they're hidden and we can't see them, sometimes we have no idea.
  • 03:37 Okay, go ahead and practice those page breaks and practice showing your codes.

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