This should be easy but I can’t figure it out… I have a Word document in two sections. The first section is just the cover page and TOC and it has headers and footers but no page numbers.
The second section (the bulk of the doc) has headers and footers, and page numbers starting with 1. The second section has 16 pages.
My footers for section 2 say “1 of 18”, … through “16 of 18”. But I want them to say “of 16”.
Why is it saying “of 18” (i.e. it’s counting the cover page and TOC), and how do I get it to say “of 16” ??
You’re working with the interaction of two tricky comncepts in Word: “fields” (in this case, inserting the page number and number of pages automatically) and “sections”.
You can do what you want, as long as you take a moment to think it through.
Firstly, open the header/footer and go to the section that should be page-numbered “1 of 16”, and turn OFF the “same as previous” seeting, or make sure it’s off.
Now go down and highlight your number-of-pages number (the one that should say “16” but currently says “18”) and right mouse and select “Toggle field codes” so you can see what you’re doing.
Your page number (in fact, all the fields in the document) will now look like a gray word in brackets – that’s the name of the function that generates your page numbers.
I’ll bet it says { NUMPAGES }. That’s the total number of pages in the document…18.
But you want the number of pages in the section. You just need a different field code.
In this case, you need { SECTIONPAGES }. Go to the pulldown menu and grab Insert, then Field, then scroll down the list of field types to SectionPages.
Note that in the bottom of that menu window there’s a description of what the field does. There’s one for each field; nose around and you may get some fun ideas.
You should be good to go…don’t forget to toggle the field codes back by right mousing on one and picking “toggle field codes” off the pop-up.
If the 16 page body of the document is itself composed of multiple sections, it will require me to do some more nosing around.
You’re working with the interaction of two tricky comncepts in Word: “fields” (in this case, inserting the page number and number of pages automatically) and “sections”.
You can do what you want, as long as you take a moment to think it through.
Firstly, open the header/footer and go to the section that should be page-numbered “1 of 16”, and turn OFF the “same as previous” seeting, or make sure it’s off.
Now go down and highlight your number-of-pages number (the one that should say “16” but currently says “18”) and right mouse and select “Toggle field codes” so you can see what you’re doing.
Your page number (in fact, all the fields in the document) will now look like a gray word in brackets – that’s the name of the function that generates your page numbers.
I’ll bet it says { NUMPAGES }. That’s the total number of pages in the document…18.
But you want the number of pages in the section. You just need a different field code.
In this case, you need { SECTIONPAGES }. Go to the pulldown menu and grab Insert, then Field, then scroll down the list of field types to SectionPages.
Note that in the bottom of that menu window there’s a description of what the field does. There’s one for each field; nose around and you may get some fun ideas.
You should be good to go…don’t forget to toggle the field codes back by right mousing on one and picking “toggle field codes” off the pop-up.
If the 16 page body of the document is itself composed of multiple sections, it will require me to do some more nosing around, so I’ll leave it at this for now.
I hit the “preview post” button and it timed out a few times, so I tried the “submit reply” button instead and it appears I have multi-posted despite making a sincere effort to preview.
