page numbering in ms word

[fitzjj]

For various reasons i have to use Word to write one of my technical reports, however being an open office guy i'm finding it quite frustrating and hope someone can help me out.

Basically the first 5 pages need numbering with roman numerals and then the pages after that need numbering with normal numbers starting with page 1 on what is actually page 6 in the document. However i cant figure out how to do this. Splitting the first five pages into a seperate document is not an option since two of those pages numbered are a contents field updated to reflect the document and wont work if moved into another file.

This is a standard report template, surely MS Word will let me do it??

any help greatly aprechiated. thanks

 

[fitzjj]

I've actually found a solution to this, i'll post it incase anyone else has a similar problem.

The webpages:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=190550
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=214827
were both quite usefull in working this out.

Your page number is a field. If you hit ALT+F9 it will show you the field data, if you have a page number inserted you will see "{PAGE}". To insert a field such as a page number, hit ALT+F9 to go into the field view, then hit CTRL+F9 to insert some field brackets, the { }, and then just type in PAGE. Hit ALT+F9 again and it should display your page numbers.

The built in page numbering of MS Word is just not up to the standard that it should be and so you have to modify the fields yourself in order to get any useful numbering schemed. For example:
{={PAGE}-1}
is the same as saying PAGE=(PAGE-1), or to the programmers among you --PAGE;

My problem was that my report starts on page 6, so i want my sixth page to be numbered "page 1". The five pages before that should also be numbered, but using roman numerals. However i also have a page title page, which should not be included in the page numbering, thus page 2 of the document should be numbered "page i" rather than "page ii".

The following is what i entered in my page footers to achieve this:

{if {PAGE}<"6" "{={PAGE}-1 \* roman \* MERGEFORMAT}" "{={PAGE}-5}"}

where all '{' and '}' are the result of using CTRL+F9 to insert a field. Basically what it says is: if the page number is less than 6 then display the page number of the page before in roman numberals (this means my first page, the title page is page 0 and thus my roman numerals do not start on the titlepage, instead they start on the second page)

Else

if the page number is six or more then it is in my main report so display it as a normal character, but decrease it by 5, therefore page 6 of the document (the first page of the main report) will be numbered page 1.

bit of a pain i know, but i suppose it is pretty flexible if you know what you are doing.

 

[fitzjj]

Or you could ignore that and do it a better way. If you go insert>break and choose a "Next Page" section break then your page numbering resets for that section and is quite a bit easier !! Also it works with a table of contents which i need