Word – How to delete last page of Court Pleading document

Don’t you hate when you delete the last page within a court pleading document in Word, and your line numbers disappear? If the answer is yes, you’re not alone!

In this blog, I will guide you through how to fix this issue in Word.

Court Pleading document with extra page

Let’s look at an example in Microsoft Word. Here, we have a court pleading document. The image below shows the document’s first page with the line numbers displayed on the left (greyed out).

In this document, when we go to the last page of the document we are greeted with an unwanted extra page and the line numbering is no longer displayed.

Tip: Press Ctrl + End to move quickly to the last page of your document.

This last page isn’t useful at all and needs to be removed from the document.

However, it can be super frustrating to try to remove the unwanted page only to find that your pleading numbers, headers, and footers have disappeared from the document.

The problem is linked to the different Section Breaks within the document.

What are Section Breaks?

Our example document has been formatted using Sections. Microsoft Word uses Sections to lock off parts of the document so that you can apply different formats to each section without these formats affecting any other part of the document. For example, sections are used to have different headers, footers or page numbering within one document. Section 1 can have a different header from Section 2, and so on. Each section is contained using Section Breaks. Section Break symbols indicate where one section finishes and another starts.

Tip: To see Section Break symbols in your document, go to the Home tab and select Show/Hide characters.

Why are Word Section Breaks causing the issue?

In our example, the first pages of the document are included in Section 1. These have the line numbering.

The extra page of the document is in Section 2 of the document. We can see this simply by clicking on the page and then checking the Section number in the Status Bar at the bottom of the screen (see below).

Section 2 is formatted differently from Section 1 because it has no line numbering.

Tip: if you can’t see the Section number, right-click the Status Bar (the bar at the bottom of the screen, where you can see the Page number) and then select Section from the Customize Status Bar list.

The problem is, when we try to remove the extra page, either using backspace to remove the extra paragraphs or deleting the Section Break, Word also removes the line numbers from Page 1 (as shown below), which isn’t ideal in a pleading document.

This is all linked to the different format settings in Section 1 and Section 2.

Let’s walk through the steps that will allow you to remove the section break AND keep the numbering.

Fix # 1 Delete the Section break and keep the numbers

To delete the extra page, we must first understand how each section within the document is formatted.

Click on any paragraph on the first page of your document and take note that the numbering shown on the page is greyed out. This is because the numbers actually live in the Header area of the document, not in the actual document body text.

Make your way to the extra page. Click your insertion point onto a paragraph on this page. In our example, this page is in Section 2.

You will notice that this page no longer has numbers, unlike Section 1. This is because Section 2 has a different header setting than Section 1. Section 2 has no header.

Follow the steps below.

Step 1: Make sure you are on the extra page, and then from the Insert tab, click Header, Edit Header. The Header& Footer tab will be displayed and your insertion point will be in the Header area. In our example we are in Section 2.

As you can see there are no line numbers in Section 2 of this document.

Step 2: When you make your way up to the previous section (Section 1), you can now see the line numbers. If you need to, you could, at this point, make edits to the numbers from here.

Super tip: To move to the previous section in a Word document, in the Header & Footer tab select Previous and this will move you up to the section above.

The different Headers are where the issue lies. 

Each section within the document has different settings. Section 1 has the numbers, and Section 2 doesn’t. When we delete the section break between the two sections, Section 2 becomes Section 1, and since Section 2 does not have line numbers, the line numbers are removed from the document.

If this is happening to you try the following steps to correct your file.

Step 1: Make sure your insertion point is on the extra page (Section 2), and then from the Insert tab, click Header, Edit Header.

Step 2: On the Header & Footer Ribbon, click Link to Previous. This will link this section to the previous section (Section 2 to Section 1).

Step 3: A confirmation will pop up asking, ‘Do you want to delete this header/footer and connect to the header/footer in the previous section?’

Step 4: Select Yes. This will now delete the Section 2 header (which has no numbering) and connect it to the Section 1 header (with numbers).

Step 5: You should now have line numbers on the left of your document as you have linked the header from the previous section to this section, therefore copying the content of Section 1 into Section 2.

Note: If only a few numbers have been copied over into Section 2, you might like to check that your margin settings are the same as Section 1. To do this, just click on a page in Section 1 and check the margin settings. Now, return to Section 2 and make sure that the settings are the same as Section 1.

Step 6: If you need to link the document footer to Section 2, click the Go to Footer button on the Ribbon and follow the same process as Step 2 above to link the footer in Section 2 to Section 1.

Unlink the Headers and then remove the Section Break in Word

Once the headers and footers are linked, Section 2 will replicate Section 1. 

Now, you need to unlink the sections so they are no longer connected.

This allows you to make changes to either section without the changes being updated in both sections.

Step 1: To unlink the two sections, click Go to Header and click Link to Previous again to remove the link. If required, click Go to Footer and do the same.

Step 2: Now click Close Header and Footer to return to your normal document view.

Step 3: Place your insertion point in front of the section break symbol between Section 1 and Section 2, and then press DELETE.

Step 4: Your numbers will remain because Section 2 was a replica of Section 1.

It’s helpful to link the sections to copy the content from the first section into the next. Once this is done, it’s just an easy unlink and then delete to remove the section break that’s creating that last unwanted page.

Of course, it is a bit tricky, but I hope the above steps have helped.

Fix # 2 Remove the Header Different First Page option

If the steps above still haven’t helped and you still have an extra page, let’s look at another setting that may be causing the problem.

It may be that your document has an extra setting selected in the Header & Footer tab. 

To check this, either double-click the header or footer area in your document or, from the Insert tab, select Header, Edit Header.

Now check to see if the Different First Page option is checked. If it is, this could be your problem.

When this option is turned on, it creates a section-within-a-section.

What that means is within one section, it’s almost like you’ve got two sections because you can have a different first page from the following pages in one section. For example, the first page in Section 1 can have different formats from all other pages in Section 1.

I know, very confusing, right?!

So possibly what’s happening is when you’re deleting the section break, it’s sucking up the formats from the Different First Page section, which most likely doesn’t have numbers.

Remove the check from the Different First Page option box to stop this from happening.

Make sure you do the same in the Footer area.

Click Close Header and Footer to return to your document.

Now, try deleting the section break so that you remove the extra page.

I hope these steps have removed the page and kept your line numbers.

Please check out my YouTube video for a deeper dive into these steps.

watch the Word pleading remove last page tutorial

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