Big Space after a section break

Gary,

If you haven't already done this, go to the View menu and select Show Layout and Show Invisibles. That may give you an idea what the blank space is comprised of. It may be possible that the first paragraph after the section break has a Space Before setting that is larger than what you want. You can adjust it in the Text Inspector.

Good morning, Gary.

I see no template named 'Research paper" and I hesitate to open each one to see what the title of it was. Is it one of the Applle ones, and does it have a different name in the chooser you see when you first open Pages? Could it be a third party template that was downloaded?

Until I know for sure I can only guess:

The problem may that your second page has retained the characteristics of the template, and if you go to the inspector, and click on the layout inspector tab, you will find your answer in the margins area.

The margin for the top text flow area most likely has a value in the 'before' space. This generates a space in which text will not flow. This can be useful for those times when you want to place a graphic or title without using word wrap. Unfortunately, if the text is allowed to flow to the second page and no second page is preset after the first pagein the template then the next page will continue with the same layout as the first page.

So if your first page is set with the above setting and text flows to the next page it will have the same formatting for the margins as the first page it flows from.

I hope that helps.

Gerry.

Thanks for indicating the pages template you used.

What I suspect happened is that you have used the Chapter Page for the first page of your project, and that chapter page is being dupllicated on the preceding pages.

All is not lost, however, and here is how you can set it up to behave the way you want (and I am shocked that Apple did not do this, since the Chapter Page is the beginning of a series of pages, it should not stand alone on it's own)

first, in a new project with the chapter page as your first page, add a second page of text only. (you will see that in the Add Pages)

Second, link these two pages by deleting the Section Break which has been added automatically to the end of the Chapter Page when it was first saved. This will join the two pages, and their text. You can confirm this is happening if you have 'Show Thumbnails' selected in the view menu.

Third, once those pages are confirmed to be linked in the thumbnails, click on the first of those pages and go to Format-Advanced-Capture Pages. It will ask you if you want to capture the first page only. Select First 2 Pages

This will save a set of pages which will be added to your template. By changing this text as you flow from one page to another, you will continue with the characteristics of the second page on all preceding pages.

Save the templlate as a work template (or as a Pages document even) so you can begin with the various pages you want. Every time yuo need to add a new chapter, insert those pages and start typing, and it will behave the way you expected.

I hope that helps. If you encounter difficulty or want to know more about how this all works, use the iWork manual. It's a great resource, specially if you search through it in the pdf file. Then you can search for topics that you need help on.

Gerry Straathof.

Does anyone know if this is addressed in the new Pages? It's infuriating. The program is very easy except for several quirks such as this. Hitting a section break shouldn't touch the text in any way and I'm still struggling with the very same problem as the OP. I get my document 90% done in 2 hours, then it takes 10 hours to get the other 10% right. Every time I push a button, there are multiple negative consequences and I keep having to reformat and change things. How do I stop section break from adding all this space?

Never mind, I tried layout break and that seems to be holding, along with the different headers. If this program were just a bit more intuitive and less automated, it would be better.