Wrestling With Word!

Wrestling With Word!

Ok, like most people, I have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft Word. On the one hand, I couldn't live without it. It's the air I breathe, the water I drink, the spellchecker I so desperately need! So yeah, it's the best thing since sliced bread! But there is a darker side to Word, and it is called, "Oh, you want to do something other than write in me? GOOD LUCK!"

The most recent wrestling match I've had with it: How to change where "Page 1" starts. 

Note: I have Word 2007, so these tutorials (most likely) only work on that version.

Onwards! So if you want  "Page 1" to start on the second page of your document, it's pretty simple: Insert > Page Number > (select a style) > (green Design Tab pops open) select the "Different First Page" checkbox. 

Now Page 1 will be blank, but Page 2 will still say that it's 2. To fix that, follow this next step.

"Page Number" (on the left side of the ribbon) > Format Page Numbers > select "Start At" > change number in the dropdown list to "0".   

Yay! That should work!

Now here is where things get pull-your-hair-out-complicated. What if you want the numbers of your document to start on Page 3? Since the search term popped up before I'd even finished typing it, clearly a lot of people have been asking the same question. You would think that you could go to "Start At" and simply change that number to a minus 1, but that would be way too easy--and life is all about trials, right?

A Google search can lead you to the right 20-step answer in seconds, but finding the answer doesn't mean your troubles are gone.

Most of the tutorials I tried ended up messing up my document's formatting for some reason, and after an hour or two of wrestling with it, I still couldn't manage to get the numbers exactly how I wanted them. I wanted the first two pages to be blank, but for some reason, page 2 wanted to say "Page 1," and every time I deleted it, it deleted all the other page numbers too. So I ended up having two "Page 1"s.

Note: I had to Copy>Delete>Paste most of my document to keep it from having a blank page between the page break.

Here is a link to the tutorial that worked best for me. If I figure out how to do a better job, I will edit this post!

I used the answer by "The Phlebob":  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090521031120AASsL1l