First I want to start off by saying I have limited knowledge of Microsoft Word. My girlfriend has a project due soon for her Masters program and is trying to number her paper. She is having a bunch of issues so I figured I'd see if I can figure it out. Holy crap is this a shittastic program. No matter how we setup page breaks, section breaks, anything, it will not number the pages correctly. She wants and needs it numbers like this:

First page - no number
Pages 2-4 have to be number as i,ii,iii
Pages 5-~50 have to be numbered as 1, 2, 3...
Pages ~50-> have to be numbered as a, b, c


I had the section breaks in place and though everything was fine until I noticed that the first page that should have no number was numbered 1, and then the rest was numbered as it should be. If I try to delete the 1 on the first page, all page numbers are deleted. No matter what combo of breaks we have tried, we cannot get the friggin thing to work. She is incredibly stressed out already, and this has her in tears and I am completely frustrated trying to help and being unsuccessful. I am a fairly technical person, but don't understand what we are doing wrong on this. Anyone with experience know how to get this to work properly?

 

Why doesn't she make 4 separate documents and number the pages however for each type and then just print them out?

 

Because the professor, like most, is a pain in the ass. He wants the file, no printed copies. Must be a Word document, no other word processors. Has to be formatted and numbered the way he says. Rediculous. Instead of spending her time researching the actual topic, she is trying to number pages.

 

what version of word?

 

In MS Word 2003, under the "File" menu, select the "Page Setup" menu and then the "Layout" tab. Select the box called "different first page" and the first page numbering will disappear.

When in doubt, check the "help" menu.
2003 is different from 2010, and I have no idea what the Mac versions are.

 

Most common problem...use the header/footer toolbar to make sure that sections are not linked together. It's a button on the toolbar. Once you are sure they are not linked, you can isolate the sections and make sure each section is numbered appropriately.

 

This should do it...

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/wo...101832542.aspx

 

I remember this pissing me off back when I was writing papers for school. Word is the most user unfriendly program on the planet.

 

^That's funny I remember the professors were the things that pissed me off the most:

"XXX is a horrible professor. I currently have her for the hardest class you can take before getting into the journalism school (infohell) and she cant teach a class to save her life. She dodges every question asked and doesnt possess the ability to directly answer a question. She teaches XXX, however, never speaks or writes grammatically correct..."

Ah, the life scholarship, I want my money back.

 

Sorry I didn't answer last night, didn't get back on the site until this morning. We both have Word 2008 for Mac and I also have Word 2007 on my PC.

Thanks or the tips. I will try out the suggestions on the versions I have and see if they work.