Continuous page numbering across multiple documents

Question

Hi,

I have followed Cindy Meister's great article on continuous numbering:

1.At the end of the first document insert a PAGE field; select it.

2. Format the field as "hidden".
3. Place the field in a bookmark (Word 6/95: Edit/Bookmark; Word97 and later: Insert/Bookmark).
4. Save this file; open the next file.
5. In the header or footer, where the page number should appear, insert the following set of fields:

{ = { PAGE} + { INCLUDETEXT "C:\My Book\Chap1.doc" Chap1Pages \* CharFormat ! } }

6. Repeat the steps for each document in sequence.

I have become unstuck in relation to step 6.  How exactly do I repeat the steps eg. do I repeat 1-4 in the next document to be numbered and then for step 5 do I change the .doc it is calling up to the previous document numbered, or does it still refer back to the very first page document? How does the latest document know to add the total number ofpages of the first page document + second document to the latest document?

Answer 1

See http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148[Creating a Table of Contents Spanning Multiple Documents by Jonathan West, MVP](https://web.archive.org/web/20130917135242/http:/pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148).
https://web.archive.org/web/20130917135242/http:/pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148

See also Allen Wyatt's article https://wordribbon.tips.net/T011572_Automatic_Page_Numbers_across_Multiple_Documents which has a macro that updates the formatted page number in each of the component documents.

In answer to your specific question, each document refers back to the previous document, not to the first document.
For documents after the first you insert the field shown in #5 instead of the PAGE field in #1, hide that field and bookmark it for reference in the next document. Note that you'll have to sequentially update fields in your documents before you print or prepare a Table of Contents.

Answer 2

you have to create a chain of links.

In Chap1.doc, create bookmark Chap1Pages 

In Chap2.doc insert the fields from step 5: 

{ = { PAGE} + { INCLUDETEXT "C:\...My Book\Chap1.doc" Chap1Pages \* CharFormat ! } }

In Chap2.doc create bookmark Chap2pages (again with the PAGE field inside it.

In Chap3.doc insert the fields from step5

{ = { PAGE} + { INCLUDETEXT "C:\...My Book\Chap2.doc" Chap2Pages \* CharFormat ! } }

just keep chaining them that way.

Answer 3

Hi,

thank you for quick reply.

My documents wary from 4-5 pages to 100+ pages per document (All documents together are in range of 200-300 pages usualy).

I'm using word 2007. My PC is few years old (I7 procesor with 4 GB of RAM)

I do have wersion of document where all documents are in 1 file and I do not like it, so I'm looking for alternatives.

I did make Table of contens for multiple documents and it worked fine. Then I wanted to make page numbering transfer from 1 document to antoher. I did that too and it work. Provlem is,  that page numbering now is set to start at 1 for each document and it adds page number of previous document to it for displaying on page, so page number in document is right, but in table of contents every document start with page number 1.

Answer 4

In the subsequent documents you have to manually adjust the starting page number

But the big question are:

• how big are your documents in total?
• What version of Word are you using
• How old is your computer?
• How much RAM do you have?

The reason I ask is that there is a good chance you could stuff all of the separate documents into one.

https://www.howtogeek.com/74303/create-one-table-of-contents-from-multiple-word-2010-documents/

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-a-table-of-contents-in-Word-882e8564-0edb-435e-84b5-1d8552ccf0c0?CorrelationId=fbc21e41-bb5d-469e-a41e-40e6135db6f5&ui=en-US&rs=en-001&ad=US

https://www.wordmvp.com/FAQs/Numbering/PageNumbering.htm

Answer 5

Hi,

I have folowed instruction and it works. Thank you,

Do anyone know how to set up table of contens to work properly with continius numbering across multiple documents. 

After seting up page numbering as shown above table of content starts each document page from 1.

Thank you in advance.