MS Word shows wrong number of pages in a document

[Grandmoo]

I've had this trouble with very large files before, but this has only 156
pages of text. (I printed it as a pdf so I can "see" the true look). Now when
I open it flashes p. 156 momentarily the switches to 161 pages, and
everything is "shifted"... I sent the same file to two other people who open
it and "see" the correct 156 pages just fine. Some days for a few hours it
will show me the right number of pages, other days I'm stuck (because I can't
index based on wrong pagination). Last time this happened with very large
files, the pagination seemed inconsistent. This time the "wrong look" is
always exactly the same. I read somewhere that this can be caused by low
computer resources but I closed everything, rebooted, I have gads of RAM and
can work on a 370 page document with no trouble. Can anyone help?

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Two likely reasons for your seeing different pagination on different
machines (or on different occasions) are change of printer driver and change
of "Show/Hide". You mentioned printing to PDF (which involves a change of
printer driver and sometimes certainly sometimes causes font changes and
hence pagination changes) and also indexing (marking index entries will show
hidden text).

In terms of indexing, you don't need to know the final pagination to insert
the index markers - that's the point of marking in the text, so current page
number can be picked up regardless of later pagination changes. It's good
practice to keep the "update fields before printing" print option on, to
make sure that both the TOC and the Index reflect the final pagination (I've
lost track on the precise behaviour over Word versions, but IIRC you can end
up with an incorrect TOC if it is made with hidden text showing and you
don't update one way or another before printing.)

 

[Grandmoo]

Thank you, but I never placed any index markers. This work requires manual
indexing. Neither did I change any show-hide. In fact, I can be looking at
the last page and it will change before my eyes without making any changes,
and before printing the document at all! I will greatly appreciate any
further comments from folks who may have experienced this trouble. (It sure
would be nice if Microsoft would admit that it occurs!)
;-)