Word – How to set up continuous paging in Word across different sections

microsoft wordmicrosoft-word-2013

Background

In a document I'm preparing, I have the following sections:

  • Cover page, table of contents, introduction, etc. — portrait orientation
  • The second section, some challenges — landscape orientation due to space limitations
  • Third section, some recommendations — portrait orientation again.

I use section breaks to accomplish the different page orientations.

Problem

While the section breaks work well for orientation, it looks like they throw off MS Word's Table of Contents, which starts over at page 0 for each section:

Table of contents, starting at zero for each section

Question

How can I get MS Word Table of Contents to ignore section breaks for the purposes of page numbering, so that I can have continuous numbering of my pages?

Best Answer

Figured it out!

The key here is that each section of a document has its own page number configuration settings. Therefore, you have to set the page format within each section of the document.

If you have a document, do the following for each section:

  • In the section, click into the header or footer of the section.
  • In the Header & Footer Design Tools menu, select Page Number --> Format Page Numbers...
  • In the Page Numbering section, select "Continue from Previous Section".

Once you adjust this setting for each section, your page numbers will again be continuous as you'd expect them to be.

Note: this answer applies to office 2013 (and likely 2010/2007), but your mileage may vary.

Edit by G. Derrick Hodge: Note there is one limitation to be aware of. This solution does not work in certain cases if there are multiple sections on one page. If a page number looks to the previous section for its page numbering cue, but the previous section is in the middle of the same page, then there will be no page number on the bottom.

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