Page Numbers are Zeros

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 24, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Dave has a customer to whom he sends documents periodically. When they leave Dave's desk, the pages are all numbered properly. When his customer opens the documents, the page numbers, located in the footer of each page, are all zeros. Dave wonders why this occurs and if there is a way to fix it.

There are a couple of reasons this could be happening. The simplest explanation is that the fields that Word uses for your page numbers are not automatically updated on the target system. The easiest way to see if this is the issue is to open the header or footer, select the page number, and press F9. You can also choose Tools | Options | Print tab (See Figure 1.) and make sure the Update Fields check box is selected. Print the document and the page numbers should be updated.

Figure 1. The Print tab of the Options dialog box.

If neither of these techniques changes the page numbers from zero, it could be because of a strange little bug in Word 2000. This occurs if there is a combination of tables and floating graphics in your header or footer. You can find more information on this esoteric mix of conditions and how it can affect your document by visiting this Web page at the Word MVP site:

http://wordmvp.com/FAQs/Numbering/PageNumber0.htm

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (320) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is seven more than 4?

2022-05-22 22:14:49

Joel

Thank you thank you! :) This is still useful!

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