Starting Chapters on Odd-Numbered Pages

One of the formatting features of Word allows you to force you headers (if you use styles) to begin on a new page. What if you want the header to begin on an odd page, however? You can insert section breaks that force the next section to start on an odd page, as has been discussed in other issues of WordTips. But what if you don't want to use section breaks?

Unfortunately, there is no automatic way to start a heading on an odd page, based solely on the formatting you apply to the heading. This means you will need to insert some sort of special indicator that tells Word you want to jump to an odd page. If you don't want to use section breaks, you can cleverly force Word to an odd page by using field codes. The following compound field will force an extra page break if the field occurs on an even page:

{IF {=MOD({PAGE},2)}}=0 "" ""}

When you are building this field structure, make sure you replace with an actual, physical page break. When Word encounters the field, it determines the current page number and divides it by 2. If the remainder is 0 (meaning this is an even-numbered page), then the page break is inserted, thereby forcing your text to the next odd-numbered page. If the remainder is 1 (meaning this is an odd-numbered page), then nothing is inserted.