Continuous Sections breaks and headers

Question

I am trying to use continuous section breaks with styleref codes in the header. Most parts of the document has 2 headings which I need to include in the header. For example

A. INTRODUCTION

A.1 Background

A couple of parts in the documents only have 1 heading.When this occurs it pulls the heading 2 from the previous part.  For example

B. PARTIES

A.1 Background

I have set up continuous sections breaks and changed the header to just 1 heading. Unfortunately when additional text is added or tracked changes are accepted these continuous section breaks move and it in turn messes up the headers.  Is there a way to stop this happening?

Answer 1

Even continuous sections do have headers and footers, even if those headers and footers are not visible. Unlinking all headers as well as all footers might improve the situation. To do this manually, you would have to temporarily add content to the continuous sections so that you can see all headers (and footers).

Answer 2

I do need the header to pull in different fields. The document consists of 5 parts. Parts A to E. Some parts have only have a heading 1 and other parts have a heading 2 as well. I have set 2 style ref codes in the header. One for heading 1 and one for heading 2.  For the parts that only have one heading it is pulling in heading 2 from the previous part (as explained above). To fix this I used continuous section breaks and only used a styleref pulling in heading 1 for the parts with only one heading. This works well until extra text in added in the body of the document and this section break moves. It then messes up the headers. 

The only way around  this would be to use next page section breaks. Which unfortunately doesnt work for the format of this document.

Answer 3

Section breaks are not necessary when you are using the STYLEREF field, unless you also need the position of the field to be different in different parts of the document.

Of course, you may need section breaks for other reasons, such as changing the number of newspaper columns in a document, or perhaps you need a front matter with a different page number format.

Answer 4

Will I still need to use continuous section breaks doing it this way. I thought this would still pull in the heading 2 from the previous part when there isn’t a heading in the current part.

Answer 5

The STYLEREF field isn't as clever as it should be. :-)

What you can do is create a character style that you apply to the relevant Heading 1 and Heading 2 paragraphs and then have the STYLEREF field reference the character style.

You should create the character style so that it doesn't actually change the formatting of text, of course.