Word2007 - Preventing mid-item line breaks in a list in a table

Question

It's not programming, but it's the paperwork you have to fill out ot get things to program.

When you have a list with an item that's two lines long, and text above pushes it down such that a page break should fall between the two lines, Word pushes the item down so that both lines are on the following page - this is called Widow/Orphan Control and is an option on the Paragraph menu.

When the list is inside of a table cell, however, this feature doesn't seem to work - which is what I'm looking to work around. Word doesn't push the item down automatically, so it breaks across two pages, as seen here:

Solutions that have been tried:

• Playing with the options on the Paragraph tab: doesn't seem to do anything
• Changing the margins or text: this is a template and will need to always work

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You need to specify new formating rules for the row.

1. Select the offending Row.
2. Right-Click and select Table Properties from the dropdown menu.
3. Click the Row tab.
4. Uncheck Allow row to break Across pages

That will do it. It has the added benefit of preserving Header rows across multiple pages.

EDIT:

After your comment I was able to solve the problem by creating a 1 celled table inside the offending row and place there the list items. Then I follow the above procedure to set this sub-table row.

What this essentially does is keep your list as one single unit, which you can then properly format. There may there be the need for simple adjustments like preserving line spacing between the list and the remaining text. But nothing that can't be set straight with a Style definition for this single-celled table.