The drawback to such an approach, however, is that if you make edits to the document and the specially formatted paragraph no longer appears at the top of the page, you will need to correct the formatting for the paragraph so the proper space appears before it.
![remove paragraph spacing in word remove paragraph spacing in word](https://www.techbout.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/pragraph-spacing-option-microsoft-word.png)
You can either manually format the paragraph, or you can define a new style, sans space before, that can be applied to top-of-page paragraphs. The bottom line is that there is only one way to make sure that Word doesn't display space before a paragraph that occurs at the top of a page: to format the paragraph so it doesn't have space before it. Thus, even with this option turned on Word will always display the space before a paragraph when the paragraph is at the beginning of the document (instance 1 above), when it has the "page break before" attribute set (instance 4), or when the paragraph follows a section break (instance 5). The other option, "Suppress Space Before After a Hard Page or Column Break," only changes whether Word displays space before top-of-page paragraphs in instances 6 and 7, above. The reason is within the wording of the option itself, which tells you that it only affects line spacing, not space before the paragraph.
![remove paragraph spacing in word remove paragraph spacing in word](https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/417878.image0.jpg)
The first option, even though it mentions spacing at the top of the page, does nothing to affect whether Word swallows up space before a top-of-page paragraph. The first is called "Suppress Extra Line Spacing at Top of Page," and the second is called "Suppress Space Before After a Hard Page or Column Break." If you scroll through the list of options on the tab, you will see two of interest. The layout options in the Word Options dialog box.
#Remove paragraph spacing in word plus
#Remove paragraph spacing in word manual
The paragraph is preceded by a manual column break.The paragraph is preceded by a manual page break.The paragraph is preceded by a section break.The paragraph has the "page break before" attribute set, which forces the paragraph to begin at the top of a new page.
![remove paragraph spacing in word remove paragraph spacing in word](https://support.content.office.net/en-us/media/0dca805b-2823-41c2-8bf2-600ade5a7c0a.png)
The paragraph has the "keep with next" attribute set, and that setting causes the paragraph to appear at the top of the page.The paragraph naturally falls at the top of the page based on unrestricted text flow.
![remove paragraph spacing in word remove paragraph spacing in word](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qo8F5.png)