How to do page of page numbers in word

Microsoft Word offers an easy way to add different styles of page numbers to your document. If you’ve got a simple document, it works well enough. But if you’ve worked with Word for a while and use it to create more complex documents, you know page numbering can get a little flaky. So let’s take a closer look.

To add page numbers to your Word document, switch over to the “Insert” tab on the Ribbon and then click the “Page Number” button in the “Header & Footer” section.

A drop-down menu shows several different options for where you’d like the page numbers to appear—top of the page, bottom of the page, and so on. The last couple of options let you format your page numbers more precisely (something we’ll look at a bit later in this article) or remove page numbers from your document.

Hover over one of the first four options and a page number gallery appears. Each option in the gallery gives you a general idea of how the page numbers will look on your page.

Once you find an option you like, go ahead and click it to have Word automatically number all the pages of your document in that style. In this example, we’ve selected the “Accent Bar” style in the “Page X” format.

RELATED: How to Insert Page X of Y into a Header or Footer in Word

If you inserted page numbers at the top or bottom of the page, the header or footer area of your document automatically opens up, and you can make any addition you like around your new page numbers. When you’re ready to get back to your document, you can tap the “Close Header & Footer” button on the Ribbon or double-click anywhere in your document outside the header or footer area.

That’s the simple version of adding page numbers, and it works well enough if you’ve got a simple document—one where you want all the pages numbered, and you want them numbered using the same convention.

For some documents, though, you’ll want to get a little fancier. For example, what if you don’t want the page number to appear on the first page of the document (or on the first page of each section)? Or what if you want the page number placement to be different on odd and even pages, the way it is in a book? Or what if you have different sections that you want to be numbered differently—like an introduction or table of contents where you want Roman numerals instead of the Arabic numerals used in the rest of your document?

Well, Word has a way to do all of that.

How to Make Page Numbering Not Appear on the First Page of a Document or Section

When your first page is a title page, you might want to use a different footer or header for it than you use in the rest of your document and you might not want the page number to show up on that page. When you open your header or footer section by double-clicking somewhere in those areas, Word opens a new “Design” tab on the Ribbon in a section named “Header & Footer Tools.”

On that tab, you’ll find a “Different First Page” option.

 

The critical thing to know here is that this option applies to the section of the document where your insertion point is currently placed. If you only have one section in your document, selecting the “Different First Page” option makes the current header and footer disappear from the first page of your document. You can then type in different information for your header or footer on the first page if you want.

If you have multiple sections in your document, you can change the header and footer for the first page of each section. Say you were writing a book with different chapters and you had each chapter set up in its own section. If you didn’t want the regular header and footer (and page numbers) showing up on the first page of each section, you can just place your insertion point somewhere in that section and then enable the “Different First Page” option.

How to Number Odd & Even Pages Differently

You can also set up page numbering so that the position of the page numbers is different on odd and even pages. You’ll find that most books take this approach so that the page number appears toward the left side on the left (even) pages and toward the right side on the right (odd) pages. This prevents the page numbers from being obscured by the book’s binding and makes them easier to see as you flip through pages.

Word also has an option for that. On that same “Design” tab in the “Header & Footer Tools” section of the Ribbon, just click the “Different Odd & Even Pages” option.

Word automatically formats the page numbers to appear the way they would in a book, and you can then make any manual adjustments you want.

How to Add Different Numbers and Formats to Different Sections

Most documents use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) in the main body of the document and some use Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, etc.) for different sections like the table of contents, introduction, and glossary. You can set up your document this way in Word, too.

The first thing you’ll need to do is create different sections in your document for these different parts of your document. So, for example, if you wanted your table of contents and introduction to be numbered differently than the main body of your document, you’d need to create a different section up front to hold those parts.

To do this, place your insertion point at the very beginning of your document (if you haven’t already created that preliminary content) or place it right before the first page of your main content (if you have already created the preliminary content).

Switch over to the “Layout” tab on the Ribbon and click the “Breaks” button.

In the drop-down menu, click the “Next Page” option. As the description says, this creates a section break and starts the new section on the next page.

Now that you’ve created the separate section, you can change the format of the page numbers there. The first thing you’ll want to do is break the link between your new preliminary section and the next section where the main body of your document starts. To do that, open up the header or footer area (wherever you have your page numbers) in the main section of your document. On the “Design” tab in the “Header & Footer Tools” section of the Ribbon, click the “Link to Previous” option to break the link to the previous section’s header and footer.

Now that you’ve broken the link, you can fix the page numbering the way you want it. This takes a few steps.

Start by opening up the header and footer area of any page in that preliminary section. You’ll see that the page numbering persists from before you created the new section break.

Right-click the page number and choose the “Format Page Numbers” command from the context menu.

In the Page Number Format window, select the type of numbers you want to use for the section from the “Number Format” drop-down menu. Here, we’ve gone with standard lowercase Roman numerals. Click “OK” when you’re done.

And you can see that our page numbering in that section has changed to Roman numerals.

There’s one more step you’ll need to take, though. Scroll down to the first page in your next section (the one with the main body of your document). You’ll see that the page numbering likely doesn’t start off at page one. That’s because it maintained the same numbering it had before you created that additional section.

It’s an easy fix, though. Right-click the page number and choose the “Format Page Numbers” command from the context menu.

In the Page Number Format window, select the “Start At” option and then set the box at the right to “1” to start the section off on page one.

That’s all there is to it. Now you should have two sections with different numbers and formats.

Controlling Page Numbers Using Fields

Word numbers all your pages, but those numbers remain hidden unless you tell Word to display them. By inserting a field code anywhere on the page, you can tell Word to reveal the page number. This option gives you fine control over page numbers. It also lets you put numbers anywhere you need and not just in the headers, footers, and margins. For example, you could put them in a text box if you wanted to.

Place your insertion point where you’d like to insert page numbers and then press Ctrl+F9 to insert a pair field brackets, which look like this: { }. Then, type “PAGE” inside the brackets like this:

You can also use a few switches along with the PAGE command that gives you some control over the style in which your numbers appear. Use one of the codes below to give your numbers the look you need.

{ PAGE * Arabic }
{ PAGE * alphabetic }
{ PAGE * ALPHABETIC }
{ PAGE * roman }
{ PAGE * ROMAN }

To finish, right-click anywhere between the brackets and choose the “Update Field” command from the context menu.

Here’s an example of a page number we’ve inserted into a text box at the bottom right of our page.

Fixing Broken Page Numbers

If your page numbers are broken in a document—maybe they appear non-sequentially or restart seemingly at random—it’s almost always because of problems with sections.

For Word, a document isn’t really a thing when it comes to formatting. Word breaks things down into sections, paragraphs, and characters—and that’s it.

To fix broken page numbering, start by identifying the sections in your document. The easiest way to do this is to switch over to the “View” menu on the Ribbon and then click the “Draft” button to enter draft view.

In draft view, Word shows you exactly where section breaks occur and what kinds of breaks they are.

When you’ve identified the location of your section breaks, switch back over to the Print Layout view (so you can see headers and footers easier). This is where you’ll need to start doing some detective work.

Make sure that that the sections where you want continuous page numbering have their headers and footers linked together and that sections where you don’t want continuous numbering have that link broken. You can also use the methods we’ve covered in this article to make sure the page numbering of sections start at the right number

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about adding page numbers in Word.

When adding page numbers into your Word document, several methods are available.

However, this guide focuses only on the best approaches that give the most ease and flexibility.

I’ll show you all the secrets.

Let’s dive right in.

Introduction.

Page numbering in Word is very easy. In fact, I know a shortcut with which you can insert page numbers in under five seconds (will be discussed soon).

At the same time, numbering pages in Word can be very complicated, depending on what document you are working on.

• Are you starting the page numbering from page one, page two or page three?
• Do you want the page numbers to be Roman numerals, alphabets or ordinary numbers?
• Where do you want to insert the page numbers? – Is it in the footer? In the Header? Or in the side margin?

All these factors count when it comes to inserting page numbers into Word.

So, in order to not confuse you, I’ll begin from the basics with examples and screenshots on every step.

Without wasting much time, let’s get started.

The quickest way to add page numbers in Word – Shortcut

This is so far the quickest way you can use to number your pages in Word.

NOTE: With this method, I assume that you just want your pages to be numbered starting from the first page to the last page.

Below are the steps you can use to perform quick page numbering in Word:

• Identify where on the page you want to insert the page numbers. Whether in the footer (bottom of page) or in the header (top of page). In this example, we’ll insert the page numbers in the footer section.

• Now, go to any page of your choice. It could be page one or page 10, it doesn’t really matter.
• Double-click on the page’s Footer area to make it editable. Alternatively, right-click in the Footer area, then click on Edit Footer. The same thing applies if you are inserting the page number into the header section.
• Whilst in the Footer editing mode, press Shift+Alt+P on your keyboard.
• Now press the Escape (Esc) key to exit the Header & Footer.

After performing the above simple steps, Word will insert page numbers on all the pages in the document.

Below is a very short video illustration of the steps outlined above:

Option 2: Using the insert page numbers button

This is yet another way you can insert page numbers into your Word document.

It involved using the Page Number commands in the Insert tab, or Header & Footer tab when active.

Following the steps below, you can also add page numbers into your Word document.

• Go to the Insert tab, in the ‘Header & Footer’ group, click on ‘Page Number’ to display the page numbering options.

You can also find the ‘Page Number’ command in the Header & Footer tab. However, the Header & Footer tab shows only when you are editing headers or footers. So you can double click either in the Footer or Header section to make it editable.

• From the ‘Page Number’ drop-down menu, choose your page numbering style to automatically insert the page numbers into your document.

Use the ‘Top of Page’ option if you want to insert page numbers on top of the pages. Or use ‘Bottom of Page’ option to add page numbers to the bottom of the pages.

This is how you can add page numbers to your word document.

The two approaches explained above are the basis for learning how to insert complex page numbers in Word.

Now let’s look at more advanced ways you can insert or tweak page numbers to suit your needs.

Numbering your pages with Roman numerals or alphabets

Word gives you the flexibility of choosing the page numbering style that works well for you.

You are not only limited to using the standard ordinary numbers when numbering your pages in Word. You can number pages with Roman numerals. You can also use alphabets.

Therefore, without further ado, below are the steps you can follow to change your page numbers to Roman numerals or other numbering styles.

• First, insert the page numbers.

To insert roman numerals as page numbers, you first have to insert the page numbers with the default ordinary numbers, and then format it to display the roman numerals.

In case you forget, to insert page numbers, go to the Insert tab, under the Header & Footer group, click Page Number and then specify the location and style you want for your page numbers.

• After successfully adding the page numbers, go to Page Number > Format Page Numbers in the Insert tab.

• From the ‘Page Number Format’ dialog, click the ‘Number format’ options and select the numbering style you want. You can select alphabets or roman numerals.

• Click on the OK button.

This few steps will change your page numbers to roman numerals.

NOTE: You can also include different page numbers in the same document. For instance, you can use Roman numerals for the introduction pages, and start page 1 on the main part of the content. This technique is discussed later in this article.

Removing page number from the first page

Perhaps you want to remove the first-page numbering since it serves as your cover page.

Or for any other reason, you can remove the page number from the first page of your Word document using the following editing steps:

• Double-click the Footer/Header section to activate the ‘Header & Footer’ tab. Alternatively, right-click the footer area and Click on Edit Footer.
• From the ‘Header & Footer’tab, select ‘Different First Page’.

As soon as you check the ‘Different First Page’ checkbox, the page number on the first page disappears.

NOTE: Even though there’s no page number on the first page anymore, it is still counted. This means that the second page will still display page number 2 instead of page number 1. To start numbering page 1 on the second page, keep reading below.

Numbering pages starting on page 2

After removing the page number on the first page, you realized that the second page still has page number 2 instead of 1.

This is because the first page is still counted, it’s just that the page number is not visible.

There are two ways you can number pages in Word starting on page 2:

1. Start the page numbering at 0 (zero). This way, the first page will be page 0 (which is hidden anyway), and the second page will be numbered page 1.
2. Use Section Breaks to separate the first page from the rest of the pages. This way, you can delete the page number on the first page and it will not affect the other page numbers on the rest of the pages.

In this section, I’ll show you how to number pages in Word starting at 0 (zero) instead of 1 (one).

• First, insert the page numbers into your document. If you don’t know how to insert page numbers, refer to the previous sections. If you already have your pages numbered, move to the next step.
• In the Insert tab, go to Page Number > Format Page Numbers.

• The ‘Page Number Format’ dialog appears. Under the page numbering section, type 0 (zero) in the Start at box.

• Click OK.

At this point, the page numbering will start with 0 (zero) on the first page which is not visible. Then the second page will be numbered N1, and so on.

TIP: Not every page needs to be on page 1. Therefore, just like starting to number at zero, you can also start your numbering at any number (except negatives) depending on the layout of your content.

As mentioned already, the second method to perform this task involve using section breaks to separate the first page from the rest of the pages. I’ll cover this approach in the next sections where you’ll learn how to insert page number in Word starting from a specific page.

Insert page number in word from specific page

Yes, it is possible to start page numbering from any page in your word document.

In the previous section, we already talked about how you can start numbering your pages from page two using the ‘Different First Page’ option.

With the ‘Different First Page’ method, you can only start numbering your pages on page 2. You cannot really insert the page numbers on other specific pages like page 3, page 4 or page 5.

To skirt this limitation, you need to use what is called Page Breaks to break your pages into sections. This way, each section can have independent headers and footers, which means that they can also be numbered independently.

To understand how this works, let’s demonstrate how to start page numbers on page 3.

Starting page numbers on page 3 or any other page

NOTE: The following steps will show you how to start numbering your pages from page 3. However, you can apply the same idea to add page numbers from any specific page you want, like page 5.

The diagram below illustrates the goal of this section:

In the diagram above, the first section (first and second pages), is the introduction – with no page numbers. And the second section (starting from the third page), is the main content – which contains page numbers, starting with number 1.

If you follow the steps below carefully, you will achieve awesome results.

Without further ado, let’s dive right into the action:

• Identify the page from where you want to start the numbering. In this example, it’s page 3.
• Place the insertion pointer at the start of the third page (main content page).

• Go to the Page Layout tab, in the page setup group, click on Breaks and then select Next Page from the extended list of commands.

At this point, the section break is inserted. It separates the document’s first two pages from the rest of the pages. Thus, starting from page 3 is a new section.

• Confirm the section break

After inserting the section break, Word doesn’t actually make the effects visible. Everything happens in the backend.

So, to be sure that the section break is really inserted, Press Ctrl+Shift+8 on PC or ⌘+8 on Mac. This will make all the paragraph marks visible including section breaks.

If you see the section break line just before the third page, it means that inserting the section break was successful. It tells Word that the next page (page 3) begins a different section which may have different header/footer.

• Unlink the header/footer for the second section from that of the previous.

To unlink these two sections:

Double-click to activate the Footer section on page three. This displays the Header & Footer tab, in the Navigation group, click on Link to Previous to deselect that command. Do the same for the Header.

When the “Link to Previous” item is selected for any given header or footer, it means that the header or footer is the same as that for the previous section. If you want to fix page numbers on specific pages, you don’t want that setting active.

Now follow the rest of the steps to insert the page numbers on page 3.

• Go to the Insert tab, in the ‘Header & Footer’ group, click on ‘Page Number’ to display the page numbering options.

• From the ‘Page Number’ drop-down menu, choose your page numbering style you want.

Use the ‘Top of Page’ option if you want to insert page numbers on top of the pages. Or use ‘Bottom of Page’ option to add page numbers to the bottom of the pages.

After adding the page numbers, you’ll notice that each section has its pages numbered separately. Section one, which has only two pages will be numbered from page 1 to 2. Then section two, which begins with page three will also be numbered starting from 1.

You can change the numbering styles of the introduction pages to say roman numerals.

We’ll talk about how to do that in the last section below.

How to insert different page numbers in word

You can use different page numbering styles within the same document.

Perhaps you want to use Roman numerals for numbering the introduction and then start over with page number 1 for the main content.

For instance, consider a document with two separate sections, as shown below:

Section 1 is the introduction which uses Roman numerals to number the pages. Section 2 contains the main content – which uses the standard ordinary numbers to number the pages, starting with page number 1.

This is entirely possible if you following the steps below very carefully.

• Open your document. If you haven’t written the content yet, you can finish writing it before you make the settings.
• Using the steps in the preceding section, insert a page break to separate the first section from the second.
• After dividing the document into sections, insert page numbers using the steps I showed you from the beginning.
• Change the page numbers in section one to Roman numerals. This is already covered in the previous sections.
• Format the page numbering in the new section too.

You can use the techniques discussed on this page to solve many page numbering problems in Word.

This is enough information to help you fix page numbers in Word.

Now it’s your turn to take action.

If you have any questions, suggestions or corrections, let me know in the comments section.