The critical thing to know here is that this option applies to the section of the document where your insertion point is currently placed. On that tab, you’ll find a “Different First Page” option. When you open your header or footer section by double-clicking somewhere in those areas, Word opens a new “Design” tab on the Ribbon in a section named “Header & Footer Tools.” When your first page is a title page, you might want to use a different footer or header for it than you use in the rest of your document and you might not want the page number to show up on that page. How to Make Page Numbering Not Appear on the First Page of a Document or Section For example, what if you don’t want the page number to appear on the first page of the document (or on the first page of each section)? Or what if you want the page number placement to be different on odd and even pages, the way it is in a book? Or what if you have different sections that you want to be numbered differently-like an introduction or table of contents where you want Roman numerals instead of the Arabic numerals used in the rest of your document? That’s the simple version of adding page numbers, and it works well enough if you’ve got a simple document-one where you want all the pages numbered, and you want them numbered using the same convention.įor some documents, though, you’ll want to get a little fancier. When you’re ready to get back to your document, you can tap the “Close Header & Footer” button on the Ribbon or double-click anywhere in your document outside the header or footer area. If you inserted page numbers at the top or bottom of the page, the header or footer area of your document automatically opens up, and you can make any addition you like around your new page numbers. RELATED: How to Insert Page X of Y into a Header or Footer in Word In this example, we’ve selected the “Accent Bar” style in the “Page X” format.

Once you find an option you like, go ahead and click it to have Word automatically number all the pages of your document in that style. Each option in the gallery gives you a general idea of how the page numbers will look on your page. Hover over one of the first four options and a page number gallery appears.

Word footer page numbers incorrect