Every once in a long while there's a need for a List where each item has its own Word Section. The most common reason is for page numbering that starts from "-1-" each time. While Word allows a pagination restart with each Section, managing Sections is difficult; managing Sections in Lists is almost impossible. We've added List/Section functionality to our to-do wishlist for development, but in the meantime, here is a cool workaround.

After Filling the form, replace each hard page break with a section break. Rather than find and replace each one manually, it would be nice to use search-and-replace. Unfortunately, though Word's search-and-replace feature allows searching for hard page breaks and section breaks, and allows replacing with hard page breaks, it DOES NOT allow replacing with section breaks. You could (a) create a section break, (b) copy the section break, and (c) use search-and-replace to search for page breaks and replace with clipboard contents. But that's a big hassle too. So we wrote a macro that automates the whole thing:

Sub PBtoSB() 'replaces Page Breaks with Section Breaks    

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

 With Selection.Find

.Text = “^m”

.Replacement.Text = “”

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Format = False

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = False

.MatchWildcards = False

.MatchSoundsLike = False

.MatchAllWordForms = False

End With

Selection.Find.Execute

Do While Selection.Find.Found

Selection.Delete Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1

Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdSectionBreakNextPage

Selection.Delete Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1

Selection.Find.Execute

Loop

End Sub

If your form contains some hard page breaks that need to REMAIN hard page breaks, and others that need to be replaced by section breaks, you would (a) instead of using hard page breaks, indicate the section break locations with some distinctive text like "[put section break here]", and (b) alter the macro to search for that distinctive text instead of searching for hard page breaks.

That macro is contained in the attached document, along with instructions on how to copy it to your computer and assign it to a button. That still leaves you with a two-step process, but gets the job done with one extra click: Fill the form, then run the macro.