Starting Page Numbering on Page 2, and Other Ways to Mix Page Styles in a Document

Note: See also this blog on just using the offset feature.

Note: This is a repost from December that didn't get published correctly. Also see my post that will be coming Wednesday, on an easier approach if you just want to insert some columns in a document.

All right. It's the elephant in the room, and it's time to address it.

How do you have no page number on the first page, then have the second page start with the page number 1 in the footer? Or with page number 42, or 623?

(Or how do you have a landscape page in a portrait document?)

Good question. It's a common one. It's actually not more complex than the tax code, but there's some setup you need to do that's a little more complicated than the task at hand. I would like to see a checkbox/field combination somewhere  that would let you specify "For this document, start the page footer on page __ and make the first page number be ___". However, for now, we do it this way.

There are two things to control in this situation:
- Whether there is a page number in the footer--i.e. whether there is any number at all in there, regardless of what it is.
- If there is a page number in the footer, what that page number is.

You control the first with page styles: you set up the page style, say "yes, there's a footer and a page number in it" or "no, no stinkin' page numbers here" and then apply that page style.

You control the second a few different ways. I'm going to show you the most straightforward which is just to create a page break, switch to a different page style, and specify what the page number for that page is.: 1, 42,  623, or anything else.

Let's look at part 1 first.  Page styles are actually a really nice, useful feature.

Part 1: Setting Up Page Styles

Bring up the document you're working with.  Remove any page breaks you've put in between the first and second pages. This sample  document I'm using has some text that clearly goes on a cover page, and then it runs immediately into the content text that should start on page 2.

For any of these images, just click on any of them that are too small for you to read. (They mostly all are, but you might not need to get more detail on all of them.)

Here's my sample document. I want no page number on the first page and page number 1 on the 2nd page.

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting. In that window, click the Page Styles icon at the top.

Right-click in the blank part and choose New. You're going to make the page styles you need.

In the Organizer tab of the page styles window, just name the style  something like Cover Page. This is the one with no footer and no page number.

You actually don't need to do anything else. But just to make sure it's clear when we're applying the styles in this procedure, I'm going to suggest that you  click the Background tab and give it the  light gray background.

Click OK.

Now, right-click in a blank part of the Styles and Formatting window again, and choose New. This time you're creating the other page style, the one for the main body where you're going to have a page number and start it at 1. Call it Main Body or something, in the Organizer tab.

Then click the Footer tab and turn it on by marking the checkbox.

That's all you really need to do, so click OK.

Part 2: Applying a Page Style, Then Switching to Another

Click in the first page of the document, where you want the Cover Page page style. In the Styles and Formatting window, double-click the Cover Page style you created. The style will be applied, as you can tell from the gray background.

The style is applied not only to that page, but to the entire document. That's what's supposed to happen at this point.

Now you're ready to switch. So click to the left of the first word where you want to switch, the first word of the next page usually. Or click to the right of the last word on the current page. Whatever works. Here I've clicked to the left of "Why".

Choose Insert > Manual Break. In the window that appears, just tell it that now you want to switch to the Main Body page style by selecting it in the list.

That second page is also really the first content page of the document, so you'd like it to be page 1. So select the page numbering checkbox and specify 1. (Or any number you want.)

Click OK.

A page break will be inserted where your cursor was, and the new page style you specified, Main Page, will be applied from that page on in the document.

Now, there's one more step. You've already created the footer for that Main Page style, but it's time to put content in it.  I.e., the page number. This is easy. Just scroll to the bottom of the first content page (the second page), type the word page and a space if you want, then choose Insert > Fields > Page Number. The page number will appear. And  you already specified that on this page where the page style switches to MainPage, the page numbering should restart at 1.  So it restarts at 1. (If you had specified page number 42 earlier, this number would be 42.)

That's All There Is To It

Just create the styles you want, apply the first style, then just switch page styles the way we did in this example.

Tips for Landscape and Portrait in the Same Document

To have a landscape page in a portrait document, just create a page style and select the Landscape option of the Page tab. So in this example, you could create a third page style, call it Landscape or Horizontal. Switch to it the way we did here with the manual break, but just don't change the page number.

Tips for Automatic Switching From One Page Style to Another

If you want to automatically switch from one page style to another, you have two options.

In the page style definition window, click the Organizer tab and find the Next Style list. You'll still need to insert manual page breaks sometimes but you won't have to switch styles as we did earlier.

In the paragraph style definition window, click the Text Flow tab and find the section in the middle dealing with creating a page break with a particular page style on the next page.

Or try using all three approaches together.

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Comments

[Dominic]

Thanks for your howto on the cover page numbering and new sections, I am in the middle of migrating myself from MS Word ... phew! I agree, there could be a dialog for page numbering for a new section, new page, the page-numbering in MSW is bizarre in the extreme ...

[Alyson]

Thank you so much for the page numbering information! I was going crazy trying to figure out how to start numbering on the second page until, of course, I found this entry. I didn't expect page numbers to be the most difficult part of my term papers!

[Solveig Haugland]

Isn't it odd, such a simple thing is sooo not obvious? This is my number one wish for a future version: a nice checkbox instead of using styles.

Solveig

[Max P.]

Thank you for the how-to. Quite a cumbersome solution to a common problem! I do agree that this should be a simple standard feature.

[Solveig Haugland]

Yeah, if there were one thing that would make training classes simpler, it would be this feature. I give clients a template with this feature built in.

[Ivan Teliatnikov]

Thank you for your how-to. Very useful. I wonder if it is possible to re-start page count from a given page ( section ) in the document?

[Solveig]

Hi Ivan,

You can choose Insert > Manual Break at any point, select any page style in the dropdown list, and then select the checkbox to restart page numbering. Then type 1 or wherever you want to restart.

Solveig

[~Sophie~]

Thanks so much for the info, I'd already given up on the landscape thing but now I can do page numbers AND add landscape pages :D

[David]

Hey thanks for this. Really helped me!

[Mikael]

How about adding a page count of a section?
I have a paper with an introductory section (numbered i, ii, iii) and the main body with numbers 1...56. I would like to have a field in the introductory section, containing the number of pages of the main body of the paper (i.e., 56) and have that automatically updating. I'm sure there is a way to do this, just haven't figured it out yet.

[Solveig]

Hi Mikael,

That's a bit of a brain-cruncher. So you want to display a field showing the total number of pages in a subsection of a document.

The only thing I can think of is a hack. Put a normal page number field, in white so it doesn't display, at the end of the content so it displays the number on the last page. Then use a cross-reference or bookmark to display that page number in black, wherever it appears. (Select the white page number, Insert > Cross Reference, select Set Cross Reference, and name it. Then back where you want to display the total page count, choose Insert > Cross Reference, select Insert Cross Reference, pick the cross reference previously created, select Reference as the format.)

I just tried it and it worked.

Solveig

[Stefaan Verhellen]

How to start on the very first page with a different pagenumber from 1?
I am in the process of writing a book, but as it grows too large I've cut it in pieces (Oo lack of speed!). But the second part must begin with the pagenumber+1 of the first part. Each piece will be exported in pdf and than glued together.

I have tried a manual break as the first character of a new piece but got an extra empty page. How can it be fixed?

[Handysmurf]

Thank You!!

I love the capability of OO to .pdf but couldn't figure out how to make it do my legal stuff. No page numbers on some pages, Numbering i,ii on some, numbering 1,2 on some. If you want to do an appellate brief it contains many things, some not numbered, some have to be counted. It's crazy.

You just saved me a HUGE!!!! headache.

(no I'm not an attorney, I was forced into a civil matter as a plaintiff, don't ask, long story)