

The reason is within the wording of the option itself, which tells you that it only affects line spacing, not space before the paragraph. 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.
#Line spacing to single word 2016 for mac plus
#Line spacing to single word 2016 for mac manual

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.The paragraph is at the very beginning of the document.To understand when Word does and does not remove the space, it is helpful to understand the reasons for which a paragraph may be placed at the top of a page. If the paragraph that is formatted with extra space before it falls at the top of a page, Word will sometimes remove the extra space and sometimes it won't. This is often helpful in page layout to visually separate sections of your document from one another. When you define the formatting for a paragraph (such as a heading), you can instruct Word to add additional space before the paragraph.
