How to make Section Fields ignore front matter?

[bufossil]

I am using Word 2003. I apologize if someone posted this same question, I
didn't find it using the Search tool.

I have been asked to edit a Word document that contains several sections.
The previous owner of the document filled it with lots of Section fields,
including the section numbers in the footer: X of Y (where "X" is the section
number).

How can I get the section number to ignore the title/copyright pages
(section 1), and the TOC (section 2)? The previous owner simply put the
front matter at the end (bottom) of the document in order to make the
sections all number correctly in the body of the document.

My guess is that you can add "-2" somewhere in the Section field, but I
can't figure out the syntax. The current Section field looks like this:

{ SECTION \* Arabic \* MERGEFORMAT }

Thanks for your help!

Tim Munyon

 

[Stefan Blom]

Use { = { SECTION } - 2 }. Note that you cannot type the field
delimiters,{ }, from the keyboard; each pair must be added by pressing
Ctrl+F9.

Use F9 to update the field. Alt+F9 toggles the display of field codes (for
the whole document). Shift+F9 shows/hides field codes for the selected
field(s).

 

[bufossil]

Thank you Stefan, I totally missed the whole Ctrl+F9 step.

 

[Stefan Blom]

I'm glad I could help.