How do I implement chapter running headers with no header on first page when there are extra section breaks around?

Question

Apologies if I've asked a similar question before under a different guise, but I'm still groping around for a good solution.

I want to implement running chapter headers with the running header suppressed on the first page of each chapter.

All chapter titles are formatted using the H1 style.

Not all chapters start on a new page. That's not too much of a problem because STYLEREF will pick up the last H1 style if I set it to search from the bottom of the page.

The real problem is that the document switches from one column to two column format within chapters, so there will be additional section breaks dotted about on pages that aren't the first page of a chapter. I therefore can't rely on using the "different first page" feature of Word headers to suppress the header on the first page of a chapter.

So far the best I've managed is to manually implement running header suppression on the first page of every chapter after the document has been written by manually adding an empty white text box over the running header on the first page of every chapter. However this is a chore and of course if I later edit the document (these are technical manuals and must evolve with the product they describe) the white text boxes shift if the pagination changes.

I've tried writing a VBA macro to automate this, by searching for pages with H1 style text on them and automatically generating the white text boxes, with the intention of running the macro after I've finished writing the document, but it isn't reliable. The macro fails to generate white boxes on pages where there doesn't seem to be any H1 text and I still have the problem of the white text boxes moving around if I later edit the document.

Is there really no better solution to this?

Regards,

Bruce Officer

Answer 1

I'm afraid I don't see a way to do this, without manual "intervention," that is. :-(

Answer 2

No. The only pattern is that if a page has one or more H1 headings on it, that page must not have a running header. If the page has no H1 headings on it, that page must have a running header repeating the text of the most recent H1 heading. I can't count on the positioning of section breaks at all.

Answer 3

You might be able to automate (or rather "semi-automate") this, by using a macro, but it would be necessary to identify a pattern. For example, can you be certain that each continuous section would never need a first page header?

Answer 4

Yes, I could do this manually as you suggest, but these documents are live documents which are revised and republished often several times a year. With sections coming and going as the document is revised, I'd constantly have to tweak the headers. Others might also revise the document in my absence and they could well pay little attention to this sort of formatting. It really needs to be built in to the document or template.

Answer 5

Note that you should be able to use "Different first page" because it is a section-specific setting, meaning that you can enable it for one section but not for the next one, if you don't want to. Even if you do have a different first page for two sections, you can unlink headers (by deselecting Link to Previous on the Header & Footer Tools Design tab of the ribbon), which lets you have different content in them.