Sunday 24 July 2011

Page Numbers in Micro$oft Word

Having struggled for hours trying to get Page X of Y in my footer in Word 2007 I eventually appear to have succeeded.  So for my use and for anyone else with this problem I am putting the solution on this blog.

Search terms to help me find this page when I want it:
Page numbering in Word.
Page X of Y
Page numbers in headers and footers.
Page 1 of 2

First off I want to say how bloody annoying Micro$oft are getting.  "VERY!"  There - that's sorted.

I fully understand that issues like page numbering are difficult to implement (not that difficult actually) and that explaining the subtleties is deemed beyond the intelligence of most Word users (that may be true) but it is reasonable to explain the basics as well as the endless list of "If you want it orange go to this selection and select that drop down and click 'Orange Page Number' and click 'Ok'", "If you want a big page number go to footers and select esoteric option and select the 'Size' option and on the 'Size' option select the 'Big' tab and select 'Page Number'.", "If you are writing to your mother ..." etc.  They seem to escalate the concept of thinking what you might want in particular and then creating that particular thing.  Whatever happened to generic solutions.  What happened to giving the 'user' control.  Well it is actually because Micro$oft are co-dependent.  They need you to be dependent on them.  So they foster your dependency.  In the long run it is destructive and I hate them for it.

This is not an in depth study of fields in Word but I did discover that you can type:
{ PAGE } of { NUMPAGES }

BUT...
You don't actually 'type' that.  You have to create the curly parenthesis as a field by pressing Ctrl F9.  Then you type 'PAGE' (without the single quotes) or 'NUMPAGE' inside the curly brackets.

Of course things are never simple with Word and I found that this does work in footers and headers but when I tried it in the document body it didn't seem to update automatically.

For more info see:
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/numbering/pagenumbering.htm

3 comments:

  1. Oh good grief buy a Mac would you!

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  2. For fucks sake!!! I spend weeks wandering over and bugger all then I give it a rest for a couple of days and you go post mad!!!!

    You did it on purpose didn't you?

    I cannot comment here as I'm technologically inept - until my daughter returns from the depths of Madagascar anyroad...

    Use a hammer. I did.

    Didn't work mind you...I had to get a new computer....but it didn't half feel goooood!!!!

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  3. Demeur: I feel ashamed and embarrassed . Truth is with all the knowledge I have I know Macs are far superior but I am stuck in a rut with PCs.
    Four Dinners: He he. I was hiding and waiting.

    ReplyDelete