Getting Page Numbering Right in Word

One of the biggest challenges to getting a dissertation formatted can be page numbering. Different pages have different requirements. If you use the OpenOffice template, this is easy to solve because OpenOffice allows you to define page styles, and the template has all the page styles you need. If you are Word user, however, you must make certain manual changes. This page offers a tutorial on how to achieve the page numbering you need and be able to have footnotes restart numbering for each chapter.

Page Formatting Basics

First, you need to know how Word handles pages and page formatting. Basically you define a page style by defining it for a section.

    1. Click on File - Page Setup... In that dialog you can adjust margins and such. Down at the bottom there is a drop-down menu called Apply to. I suggest setting your margins for the whole document (1.5 in left, 1 in everywhere else) and then changing the top margin for pages when you have to (for front matter and first pages of chapters).
    2. When you encounter a page that needs to have a different margin, on the page before click Insert - Break... - Next Page. On the page that is created change the page setup as above. Apply it to This section.

Pagination

    1. Keep each chapter in one section. This will help you when you want to restart footnote numbering on the first page of each chapter.
    2. On the first page of each chapter ad a break on the Next Page and change the top margin to 2 in.
    3. Go to File - Page Setup... - Layout. Under Headers and Footers check the box for Different First Page. Apply this to the whole document.
    4. Then click View - Header and Footer. Go to the footer and, using the Header and Footer toolbar, click Insert Page Number. Then center the text. On the first page of the chapter, click on Format Page Number and choose the 1, 2, 3 ... format and under Page Numbering check Start at: 1. That will make sure the first chapter is correctly paginated.
    5. Go to the second page and add the page number as in step 4 above, but this time put it in the header and flush right.
    6. For successive chapters return to step 2 above but omit the Start at: 1 part of step 4.

Footnote Numbering

To make sure footnotes begin with 1 for each chapter, insert a footnote and for the numbering of footnotes choose the option Restart each section. Apply this to the whole document.