page numbering awry (Word 2000)

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Good morning
I have a job to sort out a large document that has been messed around with over a period of years. Style are shot to blazes.
I think I have a corrupt document but help would be appreciated

I have removed all page numbering from all sections of a 15 meg file, 132 pages. I have checked that no sections are set to start numbering at a specific page number and all section footers are set to same as previous.

Despite this …
The physical page 8 reports as page 2.
The status bar shows , Page 2, Sec 13, 8/130

Physical Page 9
Page 2, Sec 20, 9 / 130

Form here on all is to hell & back ..

Copying and pasting this portion to a new document takes this problem into the new document.

My questions ..
Where / how is word storing / calculating the page number
Do section breaks store anything else …
Am I just battling large document fever with MS Word in assocation with the chair / keyboard interface.

Any ideas appreciated. It would be nice if I didnt have to do the rtf thing ..

Cheers
Geof

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Hi Geof:

Page numbering is definitely a section property. You can access it by going to Insert/Page numbers & clicking the format button & checking or changing the formatting. I would not use that dialog box to insert page numbers, though, as it places them in a checkbox. You can access the dialog boxes by going into the header/footers & using the toolbar. There is a button that says “format page numbers”. You might also want to look at this article.

Most of the properties that are thought of as document properties are really section properties. Essentially, the properties found in File/Page Setup…, Insert/Columns, & some of what is found under Format/Borders & Shading are all section properties. Page numbering is definitely a section property.

You will have better luck if you copy & paste each section separately, without including the section breaks. I know, that means redoing header/footers & other formatting for each section. Here’s an idea that might help (it might not).

1. Open a new blank document, as well as your old one.

2. Copy the text in the first section, making sure you don’t include the section break, & paste it in the new document.

2. Place the cursor in the first section of the old document. Open the Page Setup dialog box, don’t make any changes, but click OK.
3. Now place the cursor at the end of the first section of the new document. Press F4. This should copy the section formatting from the old document to the new document. You might have to do this with the Columns & Borders dialog boxes also, depending on your formatting.
4. Repeat this for each section.

You’ll have to manually change everything in the last section, as you can’t copy formatting to the final paragraph mark.

Hopefully, you’ll have new breaks (in the new document) that will not be corrupted. I know this is tedious, but the alternative is to copy each section by itself (WITHOUT the section breaks), paste to a new document & recreate all the sections from scratch.

Let me know if this works for you.
Cheers,

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Hi Phil

Thank you…. I was looking at a 140 page disaster 5 minutes ago… This post and the referenced articles helped sort me out!

Regards
Peter

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Geof

It doesn’t sound corrupt at all – just badly arranged. Going to RTF is not going to fix it – getting the sections under control will.

What is happening is due to the huge number of section breaks in the file. Any page layout that needs seven section breaks on a page has got to be a problem to deal with. Any one of those sections could be associated with a restart numbering and they won’t all show when you look at the headers and footers. Word can only show you one header/footer per page.

To fix it, I suggest you obliterate ALL section breaks (A quick search and replace will do the job Find ^b and replace with ^p) and then be judicious in putting any back in.

To fix the styles I suggest you bite the bullet and reformat it with styles. The best way is to get a print to refer to and then select all and remove local formatting. Ctrl-A, Ctrl-Space, Ctrl-Q
Then apply styles and the job is (easier said than) done.

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Hi Andrew, Phil
Thanks for the thoughts,
I now have another job setting it up from scratch for the next annual plan.

As an aside,
I put the doc into Word XP and got rid of personal data,
doc shrunk from 15 meg to 3.5 meg.

Who knows how many years of tracked changes etc there must have been. I hadnt thought to check that at first.

Sooner or later the world will rely on use of paragraph styles and direct formatting can be despatched to the hereafter.

Cheers & thanks
Geof

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For anyone interested in this post
As Andrew suggested the doc isnt corrupt just awful.
There are squillions of sections, a right nightmare.
Now the page numbering matches the number of pages.
I have killed off dozens of styles ..

Any readers … make life easier by prohibiting word from defining / redefining styles on the fly

This little routine seems to reset all the numbering.

=================
Sub killSectionNumbering()

For Each s In ActiveDocument.Sections
With s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).PageNumbers
.RestartNumberingAtSection = False
End With
Next s

End Sub
==========================
Cheers
Geof

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