Cannot insert section break

Question

Boy do I need help!  I need to insert a section break next odd page and I simply can't do it.  I get a message that says the following....You cannot put drawing objects into a text box, callout, comment, footnote or endnote.  I have no clue what this really means.  The page before the page I want to start as page one is a table.  The page to be page 1 is text.  It took me a long time to figure out how to actually do the section breaks and numbering on a fake document and now I can't do it on the real one.  I would sure appreciate some help.

Answer 1

I must have gotten lucky.  My new document transferred over to pdf perfectly.  At least it looks seamless and as it should.  While I still don't know what the problem really was with the first document at least it's now solved.  I suspect I need to figure out how to insert pictures etc other than using the text box.  I need a written book...I do much better with that than online manuals.  Thanks for the help John.

Answer 2

Hi Zaradi:

Oh, trust me, the PDF conversion will be unusual.

There's a bug where each section break is inclined to cause a new file to be output to PDF.

The easy way to solve this is to open the first file in Mac Preview, display the sidebar on the left, then drag the other files into the correct position in the sidebar.

Then save, and you will have a single contiguous PDF.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

I would like to add that there appears to be no place in my document where it will allow me to insert a section break.  However if I copy and paste a few pages into a blank document it will do it.  Problem is when I do that I don't see my pictures only the space and a clipboard.  I am seriously confused and I hope I really haven't done something weird to the original document.

Answer 4

Your error message is telling you exactly what is wrong: your insertion point is in one of those things, and those things cannot contain a section break.

All you need to do is move your insertion point into the normal text area.

It will help if you turn on the display of non-printing characters so that you can see what you are doing.  Click the ¶ button on the toolbar to show your paragraph marks, then you can see where you are.

Cheers

Answer 5

Thank you for the reply John.  I sort of thought it was as you say but I really don't know what to do.  I can see the non printing characters...mostly.  Please allow me to explain..I have a title at the top of the page I want to put a section break so I can have it be page 1.  No marks at the start of the title.  On the previous page I see the paragraph mark at the end of the page on the left. In the middle of this page I have inserted a text box with text in it.  At the top of this page I have a page break.  Now if I backspace the titled page to try to remove marks the title goes to the top of the page with the text box and wraps around the box.   I think this is where my problem is and I'm not sure how to deal with it.  I've thought of deleting the pages before my Title page and just doing them over but I still need them to be before the Titled page and without page numbers.  I hope this isn't too confusing.  I'm by far not an expert with using Word beyond it's simple use as a document producer.