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Margins changing throughout my document, despite having sections and saying apply to this section only... help!

Anonymous
2025-03-27T05:56:01+00:00

Hoping you can help with this..

I'm formatting a document for a book and have hit a hitch at the eleventh hour!

I've split the book into sections, but when I make a margin change in one section it applies it to the whole document - even though I am selecting the ' apply to this section' option.

It does the same for Mirror margins ( i only want to mirror margins on some sections of the book ) but again it's doing it throughout.

A search on line said Headers and Footers could be affecting this, but I have no idea what or how. My footers are linked between sections to provide continuous pagination, except where I dont want blank pages paginated and that's working fine.

Any advice much appreciated!

Thanks

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | Other | MacOS

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Charles Kenyon 167.6K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2025-03-28T18:55:31+00:00

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  1. John Korchok 232.7K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-03-28T17:38:17+00:00

    Using even and odd headers will make Word create extra blank pages to ensure that all new sections start on an odd page.

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  2. Charles Kenyon 167.6K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-03-27T07:38:33+00:00

    Why are you changing the Margins? What are you trying to accomplish?

    Would applying different Indents in a paragraph style help instead?

    One more link: Margins and Indents - Ribbon

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  3. Charles Kenyon 167.6K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-03-27T06:14:26+00:00

    Mirror Margins and Different Even and Odd Header/Footer settings both always apply to the entire document, despite appearing to let you set for only a section. The following links are to different spots in my page on Sections.

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  4. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 436K Reputation points
    2025-03-28T15:27:22+00:00

    I mean no disrespect for Charles — and I fully agree that Indents are the better solution — but my experience re changing margins differs. My understanding is that the ability to do so is dependent on the printer — some simply will not accept variation in margins or certain other layout changes from one section to another & Word relies on the capabilities of the default printer. Based on the printer I have this is the screen appearance in Word beside the resulting PDF in Preview:

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