A new page problem...

[alex gross]

Hello again, Suzanne, I've been doing a lot of work, it looked for a while
as though I had all the page numbers working in the footers, so I went on to
entering all my Chapter names in the headers. Then I came back and decided
I want my page numbers to be 12 pt instead of 10 pt (which I guess may be
your default), so I opened the right-page odd-number footer and reformatted
the number "1." That seemed to work alright, so I then went to the
left-page even-number footer and tried to change "2" the same way.

It didn't work, or rather it did work, but now I have the number 2 on every
left-hand page in the 700 pages of this book. The right-hand pages seem to
be numbered correctly.

I've looked at some of the extensive material on page numbers under your
Help system but so far can't seem to find anything to cover this.

Once again, I suspect there's a simple answer, but I just can't figure it
out.

So once again I'd be most grateful for your help...

Thanks in advance!

alex

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Instead of changing the PAGE fields manually, modify the Footer paragraph
style or (if you want only the page numbers changed while the rest of the
footer stays 10-point) the Page Number character style.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[alex gross]

Thanks, Suzanne, if I understand you correctly I think you are assuming that
I have been using a Style Sheet & would therefore only need to make a minor
change in it to get my page numbers straight.

Problem is, I am not using a Style Sheet, & at this point I would really not
want to go back all the way to the beginning and start using one.

I used to love Style Sheets back in the days of Word for DOS & I remember
enjoying myself when I would explain how to use them to others. But there
aren't really that many styles involved in writing this book, & I seem to
have managed to get along so far without them. Style Sheets also seem to
have turned into something harder to use than in Word for DOS, and in his
book Perfect Pages Aaron Shepard refers to them as being "as much a curse as
a blessing."

So if all else fails, I will go back and try to wade through all the
multiple pages of advice about inserting page numbers & probably end up
blundering my way through to a solution, since I had it right once, before
I tried to change the format.

But in the meantime, is there.some simple sequcnce of steps you can
recommend to get my left-right-aligned even-&-odd 12 point Georgia page
numbers working correctly, without using a Style Sheet?

All the very best!

alex

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It's not a question of using Style Sheets (there's no such thing in Word)
but of using styles, and by default the footer in Word is in Footer style,
the header in Header style, and the Page Number in Page Number style (unless
you have explicitly applied a different style), so modifying the styles is
still the way to go.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

A precise solution would be much easier to provide if we knew which version
of Word you're using. Otherwise, only general prescriptions are possible.

The concept in all recent versions of Word is "document templates", not
style sheets. Whether you know it or not, all Word documents are based on
templates. If you don't specify one in particular, then your documents are
based on Normal.dot (Normal.dotm in Word 2007).

And--unless you override it somehow--you are using the styles indicated by
Suzanne. And, you are faced with two levels of solution to your problem. If
you just want a solution for the current document, you can modify the styles
used in that document or use brute force direct formatting. If you want a
solution for all future documents based on that template, you can modify the
styles in the template you are using (which is probably normal.dot or
normal.dotm, since you aren't even aware that you're using a template).

If you're seeing the number 2 on every left handed page in the book... does
the footer use a page field code, or are you using the actual number 2?

 

[alex gross]

Thanks again, Suzanne. I've somehow managed to figure it out, though I'm
not entirely sure how I did it, so all seems to be reasonably well, I'm back
with what I believe is a manageable learning curve & proceeding fearlessly
toward photo captioning & indexing.

all the best!

alex

 

[alex gross]

Thanks, MVP Herb! I mentoioned in my earlier message that I'm using Word
2003 but I guess I ought to have repeated it. As I just said to Suzanne, I
think I may now have at least this problem licked.

I am very grateful to this group and its helpful MVPs. I haven't really
gone that deeply into Word since DOS Version 5.5 around 1991, which I got
for free from being a beta tester. So I have a lot left to learn and may
need to ask for help again.

Very best wishes!

alex

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes, Word has made a few advances since DOS 5.5. That's probably the first
version I used, too, as it was about that time period, but v. 2.0 for
Windows was the first version I owned, and I'm constantly surprised by how
many features still exist virtually unchanged from that version. Many of the
dramatic changes have been in the way the features are accessed (many have
acquired a "front end" to make them easier to use).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org