Say you are working with a table of contents in Word and you decide you would like to customize something like page numbers. Navigating to the header and footer area is the last place most folks will go to look. So, if you do not use it, it will be very easy to get confused.
Working with the automatic table of contents feature in Word is not always very intuitive, especially if you are not used to working with Word features and documents. However, suppose you have used Word’s automatic table of contents, as I have. In that case, you know that contents like names of chapters and page numbers are pulled from your document headings and are automatically updated when you click Update Table. So it follows that if you would like to change the appearance of something like page numbers, knowing where to go to format them is not very intuitive at first. So, here’s a little tip: Ultimately you would like to insert page numbers and that is your little helper so that you will remember where you have to go to customize your page numbers in Table of Contents (TOC) or in Header or footer you go to Insert tab.
So let’s get to it, shall we? We will start with adding page numbers to your footer.
Follow the steps below to learn how:
- Navigate to your Insert tab and look for the Header & Footer group. There, you will find Page Number. Click on Page Number.
- This should open a menu with a variety of options with which you can insert your page numbers into your document.
- Click Bottom of Page.
- Now, select Plain Number 2 to insert a page number in the center of your footer area.
- Your page numbers may still not be formatted the way you want. They may appear as Arabic numbers. To customize the number by each section, you must navigate to each section and tell Word how to format your page numbers. For our purposes, let us assume that you have already created section breaks in your document. If so, you can use the Go To command to navigate your documents by section.
- In your Home tab, in the Editing group, click Find | Go To, or use the shortcut CTRL + G.
- This will open the Find and Replace pane.
- So, once in the Go to what pane, you can select Section and click Next to navigate through your document by section.
We are finally ready to format your page numbers.
Follow the steps below to learn how:
- In your Header & Footer group, select Insert and click on Page Number.
- Inside the menu, click Format Page Numbers, which will open the Page Number Format pane.
- Select Roman numeral format.
- Select Start at i.
- Click OK.
Return to your table of contents and click Update Table | Update page numbers only | OK.
I hope this has cleared up some of the mystery of page numbering for you. No??? If not, please let me know and I will do my level best to make it easier for you.
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