Reply to Message

I work in long legal documents, and deleting section breaks always causes a mess. I have to go into the remaining sections and fix everything. For that reason, I urge my secretary to minimize section breaks to begin with. But - (1) WHAT IS THE BEST TECHNIQUE FOR DELETING SECTION BREAKS WITHOUT CHANGING THE PRECEDING OR FOLLOWING SECTIONS?
(2) Is there a fast way to UNcheck Link to Previous everywhere in the doc, all at once?
(3) I HATE Word for long documents. HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT.
(Aaahhh, that feels better.)