WD98: Macro to Find Automatic (Soft) Page Breaks

ID: Q181528

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Word 98 Macintosh Edition

SUMMARY

To search for "hard" (manually inserted) page breaks and section breaks in a Word document, click Find on the Edit menu, and type ^m in the Find What box.

There is no search character to locate "soft" (automatic) page breaks within a document. The macro examples in the "More Information" section of this article can be used to locate automatic page breaks.

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language being demonstrated and the tools used to create and debug procedures. Microsoft support professionals can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific needs. If you have limited programming experience, you may want to contact the Microsoft fee-based consulting line at (800) 936-5200. For more information about the support options available from Microsoft, please see the following page on the World Wide Web:

   http://www.microsoft.com/support/supportnet/refguide/

Soft page breaks are automatically inserted by Word when the end of the document page is reached. Any new text is automatically pushed to the next page. A soft page break also occurs before a paragraph formatted with the Page Break Before option selected in the Paragraph dialog box.

You can insert hard page breaks by pressing OPTION+RETURN or selecting the Page Break option button in the Insert Break dialog box.

The following macro examples examine the page breaks in a document and determine whether or not they are soft page breaks. The macro examples retrieve the total number of pages in the document and then move to each page break successively. By moving the selection to the left one character, the macro examples determine if the new selection is text or a hard page break. Document text has a character code greater than 31, and a hard page break is character number 12 or 14.

   Sub FindSoftPageBreaks()

      Dim iPgNum As Integer
      Dim sPgNum As String
      Dim ascChar As Integer

      ' Set bookmark for return.
      ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Add Name:="WhereYouWere", _
         Range:=Selection.Range

      ' Go to start of document.
      Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory, Extend:=wdMove

      ' Repaginate the document.
      ActiveDocument.Repaginate

      ' Loop through the number of pages in the document.
      For iPgNum = 2 To Selection.Information(wdNumberOfPagesInDocument)
         sPgNum = CStr(iPgNum)

         ' Go to next page in iteration.
         Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToPage, Which:=wdGoToAbsolute, _
            Count:=sPgNum

         ' Move insertion point left one character.
         Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1, Extend:=wdMove

         ' Retrieve the character code at insertion point.
         ascChar = Asc(Selection.Text)

         ' Check the character code for hard page break or text.
         If ascChar <> 12 And ascChar <> 14 Or ascChar > 31 Then
            MsgBox "An automatic page break precedes page " + sPgNum + "."
         End If
      Next

      ' Return to starting location.
      Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToBookmark, Name:="WhereYouWere"

      ' Delete the return marker.
      ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("WhereYouWere").Delete

   End Sub

To replace soft page breaks with hard page breaks throughout your document, replace this line of code

  MsgBox "An automatic page break precedes page " + sPgNum + "."

with the following lines:

   ' Check to see if the insertion point is in a table.
   x = Selection.Information Type:=wdWithInTable
   If x then

      ' Move insertion point out of table.
      Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1, Extend:=wdMove

   End If

   Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdPageBreak

REFERENCES

For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q173707
   TITLE     : OFF97: How to Run Sample Code from Knowledge Base Articles

For more information about getting help with Visual Basic for Applications, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q163435
   TITLE     : VBA: Programming Resources for Visual Basic for
               Applications

Additional query words:

Keywords          : kbdta kbdtacode OffVBA macword98 
Platform          : MACINTOSH
Issue type        : kbhowto

Last Reviewed: April 7, 1999