There's no good way in Word 7 or 97 to preformat a document with varying margins ù for instance, if only the first page of a letter needs to be laid out for your letterhead. Both versions require you to use the FileûPage Setup command to insert a page break and change the margins at a specific point in the text. But if you add or delete text after inserting the break, you'll get a hard page break where you don't want one.

The best solution is to create the entire document and then add the formatting just before printing. Here's what to do:

1. Select FileûPage Setup, and set the margins for the first page of the document.

2. Type all the text for the document, edit it, and apply all other formatting.

3. Position the cursor at the end of the first page of the document.

4. Select FileûPage Setup. In the Apply To field, select This point forward. Then set the margins for this and subsequent pages, and click OK. If this procedure inserts an extra hard return at the beginning of page 2, delete that hard return.

If you do need to make changes subsequently in a document you've formatted using this technique, you can avoid a lot of problems by removing the section break before you begin editing. To do this, select ViewûNormal and then click on and delete the section break marker in the document. After making your changes, reformat the pages using the methods described earlier.