How can I ensure a paragraph starts on a new page without occasionally creating a blank intervening page?

[BrentG]

I need a paragraph to start on a new page. Of course I would enter a Page Break on the previous page and everything is fine. Except for the times the Page Break just happens to be the last line of the previous page, now I have a blank page before the next paragragh. In these cases if I take out the page break and it just happens to work out the next paragraph appears on the new page, if I later go back and delete or shorten the text in any of the previous pages, the next paragraph ends up on the same page.

Is there a way to format a paragraph that says “New Page” that will put the paragraph on a new page if it’s not already on a new page?
TIA
Using Win10, Writer 7.3.4.2, and saving to ODT.

[ajlittoz]

The solution is to design a specific paragraph style. But before that, tell us the specificities of this paragraph. Is it a chapter heading? Has it a special significance which is not shared with other “inline” paragraphs? Has it a specific role in the document?

Styles, first of them paragraph styles, allow an author to add a non-printable “meta-annotation” to the text. This is the primary purpose for styles. A secondary and minor role (and this may seem paradoxical to style newbies) is to specify the typographical attributes (font face, size, weight, colour, spacing all around, flow properties, background, …).

Describe how your document is structured and the style for your paragraph will be deduced immediately.

[Hrbrgr]

Or better you upload a document here where the problem is present. You can anonymize and shorten it beforehand.

(A document is worth a thousand words).

[BrentG]

Fair enough. I have uploaded a single ODT file with instructions and sample text with a few headers. Hopefully I have explained it well enough.
ConditionalPageBreak.odt (52.0 KB)
If you have any questions, post them here and I will get back to you.

[BrentG]

Sometimes (but not always) I need a header (1 to 4) to start on a new page, without inadvertently adding a blank page if the PageBreak happens to fall on the last line of the previous page. I uploaded an example below. BTW, the header appears in the TOC so I don’t think creating a new style would work. TIA

[EarnestAl]

Modify each of those four Heading Styles to have a page break before:

[BrentG]

@EarnestAl , that’s what I was looking for. It works great.
I also took @ajlittoz 's suggestion and removed the page break from the previous page and now it works as expected.

I must have used that Format Page-Text Flow screen over a hundred times this year but never looked at the right side of the screen. Thanks again for a simple solution.

[ajlittoz]

First a vocabulary point.

• A header is some text repeated identically at top of every page.
• A heading is some intermediate title providing structure to a document. The collection of headings is sometimes named outline.

What you want is to start every Heading 1 paragraph on a new page. If you add manually a page break, since a page break is always associated with a paragraph, you may incur the issue you mention because this paragraph occupies some space, even when it contains no text. Then you need at least one line spacing available in a page, otherwise you have the standard flow to next page plus the forced page break.

The solution is to customise paragraph style Heading 1. With the style side pane open (F11), right-click on Heading 1 name and Modify. Then see @EarnestAl’s screenshot.

Don’t forget to remove the manual page break you’ve added. Since they are direct format, they would stay and always take precedence over the paragraph style setting.