Microsoft Word offers a lot of options and functions that allow us to format our text documents to personalize them or give them a more professional touch. In long documents it is very helpful to make an index or create an outline in Word to organize our content, but, in addition, something quite useful is also to number all the pages. Therefore, we will show below how to number pages in Word.
It is possible that many users have done this on more than one occasion, however, this simple tutorial is aimed at those more inexperienced users who want to number pages in Word and do not know how to do it, or even for those who, despite already having something more experience, they have found that they need to number the pages in a somewhat particular way. In addition, there are a lot of particularities to number a Word without putting a number on the cover, numbering from page 2 or 3… and so on, endless cases.
One tip before you start that will save you a lot of trouble: “The best way to work with page numbers is in Word on a laptop or desktop computer, rather than in a web browser or mobile app.” That is, at least, what Microsoft itself indicates on its support page.
Add page numbers
To add page numbers to a Word document, the first thing we need to do is open the document in the Office tool and then go to the Insert menu option. Once selected, we look for the Page number option, which can be found in the Header and footer section, and we click on it. This will display a menu with the options Top of page, Bottom of page, Page margins, Current position, Page number format and Remove page numbers.
The first option allows us to number the Word page by adding the page number in different formats at the top of each page of the document, the second does the same, but in this case adds the page numbering at the bottom of each one of them while the Page margins option allows numbering pages in Word by adding the page numbers in the side margins of the document in different formats.
Lastly, the Current Position option adds the page number right where the cursor is, while the Format Page Number and Remove Page Numbers options do precisely what they say, they offer different options and settings to give the format that we want to the page numbers or delete them in the case that we have already added them previously.
Summary of steps to enumerate:
- Click or tap on the header or footer where we want the page number to appear.
- Click on Insert > Page Numbering .
- Choose Current Position .
- Choose a style.
Special cases when numbering pages in Word
Sometimes when numbering pages in Word you may not want the page numbers that appear in the header or footer to be the same as the actual page numbers in the document. In this case, there are three situations that can occur, that we do not want the title page to appear numbered but that it is counted and the second page is page 2, that on the first page we have a title and on the second an index and that we want to start numbering pages in Word from the third page but that counts as page 1 or that we want to start numbering pages in Word from a specific number since our document may be the continuation of another.
Remove the page number from the first page
If what we want is to remove the page number from the first page or cover, perhaps because that is where we have the title and we don’t want it to appear, but we want the next page to be number 2, then what we have to do is remove the page number of the first page. In that case, the first thing we have to do is go to the Insert option in Word, click on Header or Footer and then on Edit Header or Edit Footer.
Next, within the Design > Options tab, we select the Different First Page checkbox. This will make it so that in the header or footer area, we will see a label on the first page with the First Page Header option. So all we have to do is select the page number to select it and click Delete .
Start page numbering later in the document
In the event that we want to start numbering pages in Word from a page later in our document, what we have to do is go to the page where we want the numbering to start and then insert a section break . To do this, we click the Format > Page Setup > Breaks > Next Page menu option, and then double-click the header or footer area of the first page where we want the page numbers to appear.
This will bring up the Layout tab for us in the Header and Footer Tools and we need to click Link to Previous to disable and unlink the header or footer in the previous section, which are the previous pages that we don’t want numbered on.
Now, we go to Insert > Page Number and select the Format Page Number option. There, we mark the option Start at , we write a one to indicate that we want to start the pagination at that point from 1 , since by default Word will apply the real page number, and click OK.
The only thing left for us is to remove the page numbers from the previous section. To do this, simply select any page number in that section and click Delete . This will cause all page numbers in that section to be removed. In this way, we will be able to number pages in Word starting with page 1 later in the document.
Start page numbering with a number other than 1
To number pages in Word and start at a number other than 1 , what we will do is double click on the header or footer area and from the Design tab we choose the Page Number option, select the location of the numbers and the Format. Now, we click on Page number > Page number format and in Page numbering we select the Start at option and write the number with which we want to start numbering pages in Word.
With this we can start from any number , as it happens in many of the books that we have at home whose numbering does not start until several pages have passed. It is not a very common case, but it is good to know that this possibility exists within the Microsoft office automation tool.
Problems with page numbering in Word
In addition to the special cases that we have just commented on the numbering of pages in a Word document, the truth is that on certain occasions we can find that the numbering is not relative as we create our document. One of the main or most common problems is that after a section the numbering is done again from the beginning. In other words, everything is going well in our document, the numbering is consecutive, but when adding a new section in the document, the numbering starts again from page one.
In this sense, we must take into account that the page number is a property of the Word sections, therefore, we must indicate to the Office tool that the numbering continue with that of the previous section if we wish, although it can It may be that on certain occasions we want each section to be numbered independently from the rest , which we can also do.
To solve the problem and make the page numbering correlative throughout the entire document regardless of the sections it has, what we have to do is:
- We select the footer where the page numbering starts again. Which will coincide with the beginning of a new section.
- We check the section and the page number.
- We right-click on the page number and enter the Page Number Format option.
- This will open a new window in which we must check the Page numbering section.
- Normally, the Start at 1 option is checked by default, while the option we must select is Continue from the previous section.
- We mark this option and click OK to save the changes.
Now we can go back to the document and see how the section has been numbered from the last page number of the previous section and no longer starts the page counter at 1 again.