Advanced authoring in Microsoft Word – Part 10: A box bug

Index: 232
Date: 2014-12-15

One annoying ‘bug’ in Microsoft Word occasionally (but quite frequently) causes incorrect rendering of boxes containing mathematical formulae. Apparently, this happens when a box contains a page break, and the erroneous rendering is that the box is split into two parts immediately before the page break.

For example, the following rendering is unwanted.

A screenshot from Microsoft Word 2010. A box (created as described in a previous article in this series) containing mathematical formulae is split on two pages. Near the bottom of the first page, there is an unexpected gap in the box. It looks like the box is divided into two boxes; the last box is opened only a centimetre or two before the bottom margin of the page.

It should look like this (image created using a bitmap image editor):

The gap is closed (using an image editor).

Unfortunately, I do not know exactly when this happens, nor do I know of any workaround. If you know anything about this, please send me a message.

Update (12/15/2014 7:59:14 PM): After some simple investigation, I believe the problem happens when the page break happens at a soft line break in a formula. See this DOCX example file. I know of no workaround.