Table of Contents & vanishing section breaks

I have a document with:
a front page (section 1),
table of contents, currently 2 pages long (section 2),
and the rest of the document (section 3)

This all works fine until I update the table of contents using 'update
entire table'. This results in only 2 section breaks remaining: the front
page and the rest of the document, and the page numbering then starts on the
table of contents page instead.

If I update page numbers only, everything is fine. However I will want to
add to the document and therefore will need to 'update entire table' in
future. I don't want to have to keep re-inserting the section breaks and
messing around with the page numbering.

Why is Word removing a section break when I update the entire table, and how
can I stop this happening?

Many thanks for any help received

It is quite likely that your section break is actually inside the TOC field
and is thus being deleted when the field is updated. Press Alt+F9 to view
the TOC field code, and you'll see this clearly. This is why following a TOC
is one of the few places we recommend having extra, empty paragraphs.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

"DJ" <DJ DeleteThis @discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:8CF58EA2-BB09-4BEB-B2CD-3D51539C1DA9@microsoft.com...
>I have a document with:
> a front page (section 1),
> table of contents, currently 2 pages long (section 2),
> and the rest of the document (section 3)
>
> This all works fine until I update the table of contents using 'update
> entire table'. This results in only 2 section breaks remaining: the front
> page and the rest of the document, and the page numbering then starts on
> the
> table of contents page instead.
>
> If I update page numbers only, everything is fine. However I will want to
> add to the document and therefore will need to 'update entire table' in
> future. I don't want to have to keep re-inserting the section breaks and
> messing around with the page numbering.
>
> Why is Word removing a section break when I update the entire table, and
> how
> can I stop this happening?
>
> Many thanks for any help received