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even page numbers not showing up

Anonymous
2025-02-18T20:29:52+00:00

I am working with a large Word doc - 41 sections, approximately 600 pages. Most sections have different First page, Odd/Even pages. I have done this before - publishing books every 2 years or so. Each time it's the page numbers that give me fits. This time I have everything in place - the section breaks are in good order, the First Page, Odd / Even headers are all ok. Now all I want to do is add page numbers.

I have 8 front pages that will have no numbers. (Sections 1 & 2)

Sections 3 will be the Table of Contents

Section 4 & 5 have different First page, Odd & Even pages and will be numbered in lower case roman numerals.

Section 6 - 3 pages - has no heading, no footer, no numbers

Sections 7 - 40 have different First page, Odd & Even page headers. Footers will have Arabic numbers.

I double click in Section 4 footer to add a page number to the footer. Link to Previous is de-selected. Beginning with (i) it populates the odd pages of Section 4 but not Section 5. No even page numbers appear.

Where did I go wrong?

What do I do next?

Thank you for your answer.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | MacOS

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  1. Charles Kenyon 167.5K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-02-18T22:43:17+00:00

    Thank you for following up.

    Please Mark Jay's response as an answer.

    Here are some references for future use:

    Whenever you have page numbering restarting somewhere you do not want it to restart, that is because you restarted in a previous section and then started a new section from within that section. Changing margins, columns or orientation will start a new section without you asking and without notice. What gets carried over when you start a new section? One thing you can do is go to any page that restarts the numbering and use the Format Page Numbers dialog when on that page to tell Word to continue.

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  2. Jay Freedman 207.7K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-02-18T22:27:17+00:00

    In Section 5 the Link to Previous should be turned ON in each of the three footers (First page, Odd page, and Even page). Each of those is independent of the others, and independent of the settings in the headers. They should then contain the same {PAGE} fields as those in Section 4.

    Section 6 should have Link to Previous turned OFF in each of its three footers, so those footers can be empty and not continued from Section 5.

    Section 7 should have it turned OFF in each of its three footers, with the footer text and page numbers you want. Then Sections 8 through 40 should all have it turned ON.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-02-18T22:36:52+00:00

    Problem solved!

    Seems like I just had to go to the first even page number and click on Format and ask it to "continue from previous section." Ditto for the rest of the sections.

    Each section started with "1" on first page - had to click on Format and ask it to "continue from previous section."

    I had to do this with each section.

    I added/formatted pages through the icons on the Ribbon (not Menu Bar Insert -> Page Numbers (Learned from previous years).

    Also learned: Start numbering on an Odd page so that you can start with 1.

    Get all the sections, headers etc finished.

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