In my ongoing struggles with MS Word, I have a new issue. Pagination.
I’m writing a brief. It’s got a cover page that goes on for three pages (yes, I know that’s an odd definition of cover page. Work with me. Sort of like calling a 40 page document a brief. ). The cover page is followed by a Table of Contents, before we finally get to the Brief itself - ta-dah!
I want the page numbers to start on the text of the Brief, not the cover page or table of contents.
So I’ve gone to various on-line Word sources, and they all say: Insert a section break on the page where you want the numbering to start, and then use “insert number” in the second section, and that’s where the pagination will start.
Except I’ve done that about five times, and the numbering always starts on the cover page. I don’t want any numbers on the cover page or ToC, dammit!
C’mon Mr Gates. You’re a smart guy. Surely your lovely MS product can be adapted to this not-uncommon situation?!?
I think you’re going to want to have the numbering start at 1 after the section break. You’ll need to check that it’s set to do so.
If the cover section is also showing/printing numbers, then you need to make sure you don’t have a number field in the header or footer (wherever it’s showing up).
When you come back, can you include which version of Word you’ve got, and which OS you are using?
I’ve tried deleting the page insert from the header on the first page of the cover page, and then it disappears for the whole document. If I then try to insert it on the header on the 1st page of the Brief, it re-populates the cover page and ToC, with no break in page numbers.
Yes, that works if you want the page numbering to start on the second page, with nothing on page 1. But I want nothing on the first four pages, then page numbering to start at 1 on page 5.
That an incredibly clunky solution, but it works! The software should have a more elegant way to do this. (Wait, what am I saying? It’s Microsoft - clunky is one of their operating principles!!)
You’re very welcome. I deal with just this situation constantly here at my law firm. They want our leases to have a cover page, followed by a table of contents page, followed by a list of exhibits pages, and THEN the first page of the lease itself. And of course, the main page numbering starts on that page, with the previous pages being either blank or numbered (i), (ii) etc.
Then at the back of the document are multiple exhibits, each of which must again start with page 1. Sometimes they must say “Exhibit A, page 1 of 3” “… page 2 of 3”, etc. The same strategy comes into play there.
Pain in the butt, and yes, clunky. Don’t get me started on headings and tables of contents.
If you didn’t want to do all this, a workaround is to maintain a 4 page unnumbered document and a separate numbered one. Then when you are ready to submit you combine them into one pdf. The Acrobat Pro will do that for you, if not many websites will. I’ve had success with combinepdf.com but there are others. If the information in the document is sensitive enough to worry about security obviously you might want to get access to paid Acrobat.
Speaking as someone who runs the document services department of a very large (~2,400 lawyers) law firm, please don’t do this.
Document proliferation is a big problem. Obviously less so for a small law office, but still, it can get hard to keep track of stuff.
Also, it won’t work if you’re including a table of authorities (generated by Word from marked citations) and table of contents.
Page numbers and section breaks and all that aren’t all that clunky. Just remember that whenever you want something to change about a page (anything – it could be orientation, or page numbering, or margins – anything) you need a section break rather than a page break. That allows you to number any subset of document pages independently of the rest.
So, you could have a cover page with no number, then a table of contents and table of authorities, numbered i-vii, and the body of your document, numbered 1 to wherever, with or without a page number the first page of the section. Then you could have a certificate/affidavit of service, with or without page number.
It’s really not that complicated. Just remember that section breaks and page breaks are not the same thing, and know which to use.
I see it a lot. A lawyer will draft a document. He’ll send it off to his counterpart at another firm, or at the client. The client/whoever will make changes, sent it back. The lawyer will take that email attachment, save it in our document management system as a new document. So now we have two documents floating around, instead of two versions of one document.
Repeat that often enough, and it turns into a real headache.
Exactly. And it becomes really, really difficult to track back through everything and figure out the history of the doc.
We’re working on a solution to this, with metadata included in a document, so that when it comes back, after being emailed and revised and emailed back, our document management system will ask the user if he/she wants to save as a new version of the existing document, which is usually the best thing to do.
Anyway, back to the question at hand, section breaks aren’t that clunky as long as one remembers what they’re for – when you want something to be different about the page, which would include page numbering or the lack thereof.
The bolded part is where I had my problem. Even creating a section break, if I inserted numbers in the main part of the brief, it also inserted page numbers on the cover pages, with the same format. I could get the numbers to start again on the main part, but there was no way I could get the intro to have no page numbers, or different formatted numbers.
Short of creating a new section for each page of the cover pages, and clicking “first page different”, how do you have 3 or 4 unnumbered introductory pages, then a section break, then start numbering on the main part of the brief?
No, not a one-off. I have this issue come up regularly on my briefs, and thought I would ask here.
As for the document proliferation, I deal with it by having the pen on the document, and being careful about using a consistent numbering system for subsequent drafts: “Doc.v1”; “Doc.v2” and so on.
You only need one section break, located between your table of contents and the first page of the brief, and you don’t need to make the first page different. But make sure it’s a “next page” section break and not a “continuous” section break. Then, don’t put the page number in section 2 (the brief section) until after you disconnect the headers and footers (double-click a header or footer, then go to Design > Navigation > Link to Previous). If you put the page number in first, it will show up in section 1 (the cover pages and TOC section). But even if you do put the page number in first and then disconnect the headers and footers, you can delete it from section 1 and it will still be in section 2, but you’ll have to restart the numbering at 1.
). The cover page is followed by a Table of Contents, before we finally get to the Brief itself - ta-dah!