Microsoft Word (on Mac) page numbering problem

September 19, 2024 9:32 AM

I'm having a super frustrating situation with Microsoft Word (on a Macbook).My professor distributes his notes in Microsoft Word. The notes for each section are cumulative re. page number: i.e., his week 1 notes are numbered 1-20, his week 2 notes are numbered 21-35, etc. I add to the notes electronically before I print them, which throws his page numbers out of whack. (Say I add five pages of notes to the first week, so that the first week of notes is 1-25; his second week of notes still starts with page 20). Help!

My ideal solution here would simply be to have every week of notes start afresh with page 1. I don't feel a need for the page numbers to be cumulative from week to week, since I put them in different divided sections of a binder. But how to re-number each set of notes to start with page 1? Things I've tried:
(i) Delete his page numbers. Then, insert page numbers again.
(ii) Delete his page numbers. Then, insert page numbers again, first clicking on "format" and specifying to start with page 1.
(iii) Create an entirely new document, paste his notes into it, and attempt to add page numbers to this new document.

None of these has worked. What is especially strange is that at least one of these methods has produced wacky page numbers - as in, the first seven or so pages started with p. 1 (so, they were numbered pages 1-7, as I had hoped); then the numbering abruptly shifted to something like 36. Sometimes then the numbering went out of order (!). Also I specified numbering on the right side of the bottom of the page and it went on the left. I'm very confused. Help! Thanks!

posted by ClaireBear to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

You need to put a section break between each week. So you'd have his notes, your notes, section break, his notes, your notes, section break.

You can specify a starting page number for each section.

You could also put a section break between his notes and your notes if you want your notes to use a separate page numbering system.

Bonus: when you create a new section you can specify that the new section should start on a new page.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 9:35 AM on September 19 [5 favorites]

You will be driven far less insane by this and related issues if you make Word show you its normally invisible formatting marks.
posted by flabdablet at 9:44 AM on September 19 [5 favorites]

What the answers above are getting at is that Word allows you (or your professor) to break a document into multiple sections, and apply different settings to each section. To define a new section, you insert a "Section Break", so if you see a section break in a document, you know that things above it are in one section, and things below it are in a different section.

Many of the formatting options can be applied to individual sections. In particular, you can set a section to start with a particular page number, or to continue numbering from the previous section. You can do the same with headers/footers - each section can have its own, or it can be set up to "Link to Previous", where it will be the same as the previous section.

I'd bet if you change the page numbering in the document, and then scroll through to the first place the numbering goes wonky, you'll find that there is a section break, and the page numbers in the new section are not configured to continue from the previous section, but instead have a hard-coded start number. You'll need to re-configure the page numbers in each section separately.

One useful thing to notice is that when you're editing the header/footer, there will be "Previous" and "Next" buttons that will jump to the header/footer in the next section, so you don't have to manually scroll through the document to find each section. Just edit the first header/footer the way you like it, hit next, and in the next header/footer, either "Link to Previous" or edit it, hit next, and repeat until you get to the end of the document.
posted by yuwtze at 10:03 AM on September 19 [1 favorite]

You can change the starting number of his documents, so you can change the second document to start from any number you like.

Double-click on the number on the first page and you should be able to change it. The rest are sequential, so they will update too.
posted by Wilbefort at 11:58 AM on September 19

Honestly I would look into using markdown and get away from page numbers. It is the only solution I’ve come across short of using InDesign for granular control. Otherwise you’re fighting printers and where line breaks happen. I spent a long time deep in the bowels of Word and it is a mess. I started numbering things that aren’t reliant on printing methods. Like use dates or anything else.
posted by geoff. at 2:08 PM on September 19