Broken table in word

How to Split a Table in Word

1. Start Word and open the document containing the table you would like to split.
2. Click the cursor in the first cell of the row in which you want to begin the second table.
3. Click the “Layout” tab under the yellow “Table Tools” tab.
4. Click the “Split Table” button on the ribbon.

Why can I not break a table in Word?

How to stop a table from breaking across two pages in Word?

1. Select the table which breaks across two pages, and then click Layout (under Table Tools) > Properties.
2. In the popping out Table Properties dialog box, (1) enable the Row tab, (2) uncheck the Allow row to break across pages option, and (3) click the OK button.

How do I split a box in a table in Word?

Split cells

1. Click in a cell, or select multiple cells that you want to split.
2. Under Table Tools, on the Layout tab, in the Merge group, click Split Cells.
3. Enter the number of columns or rows that you want to split the selected cells into.

How do I split a table into two columns in Word?

Splitting Cells: Quick Menu Option

1. Select the cell you want to split.
2. Right click within the selected cell » select Split Cells… The Split Cells dialog box appears.
3. In the Number of columns and/or Number of rows boxes, type or use the nudge buttons to select the desired number of rows and/or columns.
4. Click OK.

Why is my table in Word splitting?

As your tables get larger, Word automatically breaks tables so the most information can get on each page.Choose Cell Height and Width from the Table menu. Word displays the Cell Height and Width dialog box with the Row tab selected. Make sure the Allow Row to Break Across Pages check box is cleared.

How do I keep tables together in Word?

Keeping Tables on One Page

1. Select all the rows in the table.
2. Choose Format | Paragraph. Word displays the Paragraph dialog box.
3. Make sure the Line and Page Breaks tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)
4. Make sure the Keep Lines Together check box is selected.
5. Click on OK.

What is the shortcut to split a table in Word?

You can also use an easy shortcut key to split a table into multiple tables, please put the cursor at the cell where you want to split from, and then press Ctrl+ Shift+ Enter keys together to split the table into two parts.

How do I split a table in word and keep the header?

In the table, right–click in the row that you want to repeat, and then click Table Properties. In the Table Properties dialog box, on the Row tab, select the Repeat as header row at the top of each page check box. Select OK.

Can you split a table vertically in Word?

Merging two tables in Word is as easy as splitting them. To merge split tables vertically, simply select the second table, click it then drag it to the right border of the top-right cell.

How do I separate columns in a table?

Split cells

1. In the table, click the cell that you want to split.
2. Click the Layout tab.
3. In the Merge group, click Split Cells.
4. In the Split Cells dialog, select the number of columns and rows that you want and then click OK.

How do I separate columns in Word?

You can insert your own column breaks for more control over the document format.

1. Place your cursor where you want the column to break.
2. Click Layout > Breaks. In Word 2013 or Word 2010, click Page Layout > Breaks.
3. A menu with options will appear. Click Column.
4. A column break is inserted. Click Home > Show/Hide. to see it.

How do I split a column in Word?

How to Split Text to Columns

1. Open the document.
2. Select the Page Layout tab.
3. In Page Setup group click the Columns command.
4. It displays a list of options to split text into columns.
5. Select the desired option.

How do I remove a page break in a table in Word?

Open your Word document. Go to Home > Click the Show/Hide button to display all non-printable hidden marks like page breaks, spaces, and non-breaking spaces in the document. Double-click to select a page break and press Delete to remove it.

How do I remove page breaks?

To remove a page break you added in manually, click the Home tab. Click Show/Hide ¶ to display the page breaks in your document. Find the manual page break you want to remove and double click the page break to highlight it. Finally, hit the Delete or Backspace key to remove it.

How do I remove a page break between tables in Word?

Remove a manual page break

1. Go to Home and select Show/Hide . This displays page breaks while you’re working on your document.
2. Double-click the page break to select it and then press Delete.

How do you keep rows together in a table?

On the Home tab, clickParagraph, and then click the Paragraph tab. To prevent a page break from separating the selected row from the next row, or the final row of the table with the following paragraph, select the Keep together option.

How do I keep a table from breaking across pages?

Questions and answers

1. Click into a cell in the row.
2. Open the Layout tab under Table Tools and from the Table group select the Properties icon.
3. Select the Row tab.
4. Turn off the option to ‘Allow row to break across pages’
5. Repeat for any other rows in the table.
6. Click on OK.

What is the shortcut key for manual line break?

Shift + Enter
Shift + Enter is the shortcut-key for manual line break.

How do I split a page in Word vertically?

How can I split my Word document vertically and duplicate the text on both halves?

1. Select & copy the existing text.
2. On the Layout tab of the Ribbon in the Text Layout group click the Columns button, select Two.
3. Click at the very bottom of the existing text.
4. On the Layout tab, Page Setup group click Break, select Column.

How can you split a table Class 9?

To split cells in a table, perform these tasks:

1. Place your mouse cursor in the cell you want to split.
2. Right-click and choose Cell, then Split Cell Horizontally or Split Cell Vertically, depending on whether you want to split the cell into two columns or rows.

What are the different ways of inserting a table in MS Word 2010?

1) Place your insertion point where you want to insert a table. 2) On the Insert tab, in the Tables group, click Table, and then click Insert Table. 3) Under Table size, enter the number of columns and rows. 4) Under AutoFit behavior, choose options to adjust the table size.

Stop a Microsoft Word Table or Row from Breaking Across Pages

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated August 21, 2022

Applies to: Microsoft^® Word^® 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021 and 365 (Windows)

There are a few ways to keep a Microsoft Word row or table together on one page. When you want to stop a Word table from breaking across pages, the method you use depends on several factors including the size of the table. You can’t, for example, keep a table on one page if the table is larger than a page. Here, we’re also assuming the table is in the body of the document, not the header or footer.

Note: Buttons and Ribbon tabs may display in a different way (with or without text) depending on your version of Word, the size of your screen and your Control Panel settings. For newer versions of Word, Ribbon tabs may appear with different names. For example, the Table Tools Design tab may appear as Table Design.

Recommended article: How to Format Microsoft Word Tables Using Table Styles (Ultimate Guide)

Do you want to learn more about Microsoft Word? Check out our virtual classroom or in-person classroom Word courses >

Stop a table row from breaking across pages using Table Properties

If you want to simply stop a table row from breaking across pages, you can change the Table Properties:

1. Select the row or rows that should not break across pages (you may want to select the entire table).
2. Click the Table Layout or Table Tools Layout tab in the Ribbon.
3. Click Properties. You can also right-click and choose Properties from the context-sensitive menu. A dialog box appears.
4. Click the Row tab. Uncheck the check box to Allow row to break across pages.
5. Click OK.

Below is the Table Properties dialog box with the Row tab selected:

Keep table rows together by keeping lines and paragraphs together

Another way to keep a table row or rows together is to force paragraph(s) in cells to keep with the next paragraph(s) and / or to keep the lines of paragraph(s) together. A paragraph is anything with a hard return after it. Also, it’s usually a good idea to turn on Show/Hide ¶ (which appears in the Paragraph group on the Home tab in the Ribbon).

To keep a row or rows together using the keep with next paragraph and / or keep lines together settings:

1. Select the cell or cells with the paragraph(s) you wish to keep with next paragraph and keep lines together.
2. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon.
3. Click the dialog box launcher on the bottom right of the Paragraph group. The Paragraph dialog box appears.
4. Click the Line and Page Breaks tab.
5. Check Keep lines together to keep the lines of each paragraph together in the cell or cells you’ve selected.
6. Check Keep with next to keep each paragraph in the cell or cells you’ve selected with the next paragraph. It’s usually best not to turn this option on for the last paragraph in the table as it will keep the paragraph in the last cell with the next paragraph following the table.
7. Click OK.

Below is the Paragraph dialog box with the Line and Page Breaks tab selected:

Keep a table together by starting it on a new page

Another way to keep a table together is to force the first paragraph in the table to start on a new page.

To force the first paragraph in a table to start on a new page:

1. Select the first paragraph in the table.
2. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon.
3. Click the dialog box launcher on the bottom right of the Paragraph group. The Paragraph dialog box appears.
4. Click the Line and Page Breaks tab.
5. Check Page break before.
6. Click OK.

By the way, if you’re comfortable with styles, you could also use various paragraph settings in styles in your tables.

Other issues

If you’ve tried the strategies above and a table is still breaking across pages, there could be a number of reasons.

Ensure that the table is set so that it does not wrap around other text:

1. Click in the table.
2. Click the Table Layout or Table Tools Layout tab in the Ribbon.
3. Click Properties. You can also right-click and choose Properties from the context-sensitive menu.
4. In the Table Properties dialog box, click the Table tab.
5. Click None under Text wrapping.
6. Click OK.

Below is the Table Properties dialog box with the Table tab selected:

If a row is still breaking across pages, you may need to turn off the exact row height option:

1. Select the row or rows that should not break across pages (you may want to select the entire table).
2. Click the Table Layout or Table Tools Layout tab in the Ribbon.
3. Click Properties. You can also right-click and choose Properties from the context-sensitive menu. A dialog box appears.
4. Click the Row tab. Uncheck the check box to Allow row to break across pages.
5. Uncheck Specify Height.
6. Click OK.

You can also check for manual page breaks or section breaks in the table and delete them. However, be very careful deleting section breaks as they contain all information for the section.

To delete a page break or section break that has been inserted within a table:

1. Ensure Show/Hide ¶ is turned on (which appears in the Paragraph group on the Home tab in the Ribbon).
2. Select the problem page break or section break by dragging over it.
3. Press Delete.

There can be some other issues like overly large indents in Table Properties so it’s worth checking the properties if you’re still having problems.

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4 Ways to Create a Table in Word

How to Create a Table Template in Word

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Sometimes Word just won’t behave…

The problem

Recently I had a client’s Table of Contents (TOC) that got broken somehow (this is in Word 2003). If you look at the screen shot below you can see that there are two places where it is broken — section ‘9.3 Performance Standards…. 141’ is split over two lines, as is section ‘10.0 Implementation’ on page 146. There were a lot more than this, but these will do as the examples.

What I tried

I’ve had this before and have usually been able to fix it by doing Ctrl+click on the page number to go the heading that isn’t behaving, pressing Enter a few times at the beginning of the text for that section, creating a new heading with the same text on one of the new lines, applying the appropriate heading style, then deleting the old heading and any excess lines, then updating the TOC. Well, that worked for some of the Heading 3 level headings, but I just couldn’t fix the Heading 1 and 2 levels this way. They were broken.

So I tried several other strategies, none of which worked (e.g. reapply the style to the heading, reinsert the TOC from scratch, use the Organizer to copy across the original heading styles from the template, reassign the template to the doc, etc.).

What worked

What did work was a suggestion from my colleague, Susan Mc. She asked if I’d tried adding new lines ABOVE and BELOW the heading, re-creating the heading above the existing one, then removing all the excess lines and the heading that was misbehaving. I’d been adding the new lines below the heading, so I tried her suggestion — and it worked!

My TOC was back in order and I was happy, and my client was happy too!

However, this solution, while it worked, threw up another problem…

What can go wrong

If any of the headings you replace are cross-referenced within the document, they will become ‘0’ or ‘1.x’ or perhaps Error! Reference source not found’ cross-references — as shown below:

How to find these broken cross-references

Typically you’ll have a word in front of them that you can use to narrow down the search. Let’s use the example above — the incorrect reference is ‘Section 0’. So you need to do a Find (Ctrl+F) and look for ‘section 0’ (without the quotes).

How to fix these broken cross-references

For broken cross-references with a number like ‘0’ (as in the example above) or ‘1.x’, then Ctrl+click on the number and you’ll get taken to where Word thinks the heading is. Somehow Word remembers where the now-deleted heading was, so Ctrl+click takes you to where the new one is. But Word doesn’t know this new heading should be the cross-reference, so you need to reassign it. That’s easy — it’s a bit time-consuming, but it’s easy as you know where it *should* refer to.

However, if you have ‘Error! Reference source not found’ instead of the cross-reference, then you’ll have to figure out what it’s meant to refer to by the context of the text surrounding it, and then reassign it. Not so easy, especially if you’re the editor and not the author.

Other clues

Other clues I had that things might not be right with the headings in this document were the Document Map (View > Document Map) and the Cross-reference dialog box. Here’s part of the Document Map — those blank numbered items are a BIG clue!

And in the Cross-reference dialog (Insert > Reference > Cross-reference), I had all these extra 1.x’s for the ‘blank’ Headings:

What caused it in the first place?

I still don’t know what caused this document to get corrupt headings. I had only worked on it a few weeks earlier and it was fine then. However, it went to several authors after that and they added and deleted a lot of information, including copying and pasting an entire section from another document, WITHOUT pasting it as unformatted text. I suspect that’s where the problem occurred — somehow the styles got screwed up (technical term!), and even though they looked fine in the main body of the document, they obviously weren’t right when it came to the document’s structure.

(Update September 2010: I had a similar problem with a Word 2007 document and suspected that Track Changes might be the cause. So I copied the original document and accepted all Track Changes on the copy. When I updated the TOC, everything was back where it should be. It’s likely that Track Changes is the culprit, though I’m sure it’s not helped by people just copy/pasting from other docs.)

I think what I did is a quick fix only, and at some point this entire 200 page document will need to be copied over (using unformatted text!) to a clean template. I hope not — it adds about 4 to 8 hours to my editing process. The copy/paste as unformatted text and reassignment of heading styles is the easy part — reconstructing the many tables and cross-references is the painful part, as is setting up all the section breaks and headers and footers for the various page layouts (these documents have lots of Landscape and A3 pages).

It could all be avoided with the authors taking a little more time and care when they paste in text from another document — even one using the same template. Paste unformatted avoids so many of these conflicting style issues…

See also:

• https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/fixing-some-table-of-contents-update-issues/

[Links last checked August 2009; thanks to Susan Mc who suggested adding new lines in front of the headings]

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