how to add a cover letter in microsoft word for 2011 on iMac ?

January 2, 2019 4:00 PM

I want to submit a short story, which I have already properly numbered in terms of format--i.e., the first page shows no page number, the second page says 2/10, the third page 3/10, etcetera. The journal I am submitting to (blackbird) states "A longer citation of credits may be included in your cover letter, which should be included as the first page of your submission file. "

How, please, how, do I go about doing this on an iMac? How do I add a page at the top of the manuscript without altering any other page numbers?

Ideally I would have:
first: my cover letter (unnumbered)
second: page 1 of story (not showing a number)
the rest of the story, showing page numbers

I am really pretty ignorant. Thanks for any help.

posted by uans to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

I think that if you insert a section break at the end of your cover letter, the page numbering format should stay correct for the following section (which would be your story). I'm using Windows, so the menu names may not match up, but on my system I would go to the end of the first page, then choose "Layout" from the top menu, then "Breaks," then "Section Break - Next Page."
posted by lazuli at 4:13 PM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

I don't know the exact details of where these options are in Word 2011 for Mac, but here is, generally, what you want to do. I'm assuming you have page numbers set up through "insert page number" or whatever and not some weird super hacky manual thing, and that you've hidden it on page 1 through the "different first page" option?

1) Write up your cover letter (or, for our purposes, write up "la la la")
2) Insert a section break. A section break can also be a page break, but doesn't have to be. In this case, it should be.
3) Now, go to your page number footer in what is now section 2. You want to do two things:
3a) unlink from previous section
3b) format page numbers --> change from "Continue from previous section" to "Start at: [1]"
4) delete the page number from section 1 (your cover page)

Hopefully you can find all those options and get this to work. Good luck!
posted by brainmouse at 4:14 PM on January 2, 2019

In playing around with this more: Under the "Insert" menu, there's an option to insert a Cover Page. Do that (delete whatever formatting/text boxes they force in there). At the end of that page, insert the section break. It should count the cover page as not really a page so it doesn't mess up your total page count, allow you to have "Different First Page" header/footer to keep the numbering off page one of your story, and then start the page numbering on page 2 of your story.
posted by lazuli at 4:32 PM on January 2, 2019

Alternative solution, which is what I would probably do on a mac:

Save your story as a PDF- open in preview.
Create cover page, save as PDF, also open in preview.
Menu- View- turn on sidebar. Grab the sidebar page of the cover letter and drag it to the sidebar of your story. Adjust location as needed.
Save resulting PDF.

If you need a docx file, sorry this isn't the solution you are looking for.
posted by freethefeet at 4:33 PM on January 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: When I go to Break, which of these do I choose:

Page Break
Section Break (next page)
Section Break (continuous)
posted by uans at 4:38 PM on January 2, 2019

Response by poster: Also--the story is already written. How do I add the cover letter to the top of the already existing Doc?
posted by uans at 4:40 PM on January 2, 2019

(Section Break) next page.

When I tried inserting the cover letter, it automatically added it to the front of the existing document.
posted by lazuli at 4:54 PM on January 2, 2019

Response by poster: Section beak next page opens up a blank page between cover letter and former first page. Adding a cover page does not, unfortunately, help with numbering
posted by uans at 5:17 PM on January 2, 2019

After you add a section break (and put the cover letter in), you need to adjust the page numbering so it starts from the beginning of the section instead of the beginning of the document.

Microsoft's instructions may be enough to figure that out. (Or maybe not; the official Office instructions can fail to take into account a lot of details about versions and operating systems.)

Note that you can't do "page X of Y" with this method - the "Y" part is a PITA to change and there's some weird coding in Word that makes it not work right with different sections.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 5:26 PM on January 2, 2019

Response by poster: Thank you, especially lazuli and Brainmouse. I seem to have done it
posted by uans at 6:13 PM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

Nearly every magazine today reads slush submissions blind, i.e. with no identifying information on them; including your cover letter in the submission itself may well disqualify your work before it gets read. Blackbird's submission guidelines explicitly say to type or paste your coverletter into the body of your email. The trick with submissions is to follow general convention and the journal's specific guidelines; being meticulous about page numbering or whatever isn't really necessary, but actually formatting things the way they'd like is.
posted by tapir-whorf at 10:17 PM on January 2, 2019