page numbers won't show up or be continuos throughout the document

I believe you may have the same issue I was having.. I am in college and when typing papers I must know how many pages I have and where each page starts as well as what the reference page looks like. Several times in the middle of a paper, I suddenly only have a display of how many words are in the document and not what page number I am on, etc. Maybe I hit the wrong key?? Any how, If you click the little icon at the very bottom of the page that looks like a little document, (if you hover it says "PRINT LAYOUT", it adds the page numbers, layout, etc. back onto the document. :)

Your last sentence explains the problem you are having: When you clicked Print Layout, you switched to a view that displays the document similar to how it will be printed. That view displays headers and footers, where page numbers normally reside.

Other views (Web Layout, Draft, Outline) are for other purposes, and they let you focus on other aspects of a document. Those other views do not display headers and footers and margins, and therefore page numbers will also be invisible.

I am still unable to get my page numbers to format. I am doing APA, my first page is set. I go to page two, click page number format, put start at page 2, click enter, and it bounces back up to the first page. None of the other pages are numbered. What am I doing wrong?

I believe you may have the same issue I was having.. I am in college and when typing papers I must know how many pages I have and where each page starts as well as what the reference page looks like. Several times in the middle of a paper, I suddenly only have a display of how many words are in the document and not what page number I am on, etc. Maybe I hit the wrong key?? Any how, If you click the little icon at the very bottom of the page that looks like a little document, (if you hover it says "PRINT LAYOUT", it adds the page numbers, layout, etc. back onto the document. :)

Pam, you are right, using Next is the "best" way. I've used it before, in Word 2003. But tonight when I set up a test doc in Word 2010 and tried nexting, the Next button did not progress past the first section. Maybe it was the phase of the moon, sunspots, or just bad luck, but the next feature did not work for me tonight. That is the only reason why I suggested the alternative of paging through the doc.

Sylvia, if you have tried resetting the page number and it is not working it sounds like you may be getting into another level of trouble. It is possible, not certain, that you are encountering "document corruption". What format are you using, DOC or DOCX/DOCM? In theory, corruption is supposed to be much less likely with the new DOCX/DOCM format than the old DOC format.

Tell us a little more about the history of the file. Did it happen to be created in Word 2003? Have you been doing a lot of pasting from various sources into it? The fact that doc is 500 pages is no longer very significant on a relatively current machine, 3-4 years or less  (I have some that are 3 and 4 times larger).

If corruption sounds like a possible answer, if you have noticed other problems, things like numbering/bullet lists and/or styles doing strange stuff here are links some articles about doc corruption and how to deal with it:

http://word.tips.net/Pages/T003798_Determining_if_a_Document_is_Corrupt.html

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/corruptdoc.htm

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm

http://klariti.com/microsoft-word/Managing-Microsoft-Word-Long-Documents.shtml

http://klariti.com/microsoft-word/Reduce-Microsoft-Word-File-Size1.shtml