Page numbering changes in footer on last few pages, Word 2003

[kleefaj]

Greetings.

I have a document with two sections. I used Suzanne Barnhill's article,
"How to set up a document with front matter numbered separately"
successfully on a couple of documents; I don't know that this problem
is related to this.

My footer has "Page { PAGE } of { SECTIONPAGES }" and it numbers
correctly...sometimes.

As I scroll through the document in Print Layout View and Print
Preview, I see the last page switch between "Page 37 of 37" and "Page
37 of 36". The previous page shows "Page 36 of 37" while the page
before that switches between "Page 35 of 36" and "Page 35 of 37".

I read somewhere that Word has no concept of "pages" but rather uses
some algorithm to calculate page numbers. Since I can actually see the
page numbers change I assume Word is calculating.

Any idea how to fix this? I don't see this in any of my other Word
documents.

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The SectionPages field can be even more unstable than NumPages, and the
techniques at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/PageXofY.htm (such as printing in
reverse order) may help ensure that the number is *printed* correctly. But
in a case like this I would be looking at page 36/37 to see what element it
contains that is making Word ambivalent. See also
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BlankPage.htm for some things to look
for.

 

[kleefaj]

The SectionPages field can be even more unstable than NumPages, and the
techniques at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/PageXofY.htm (such as printing in
reverse order) may help ensure that the number is *printed* correctly. But
in a case like this I would be looking at page 36/37 to see what element it
contains that is making Word ambivalent. See also
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BlankPage.htm for some things to look
for.

Thanks, Suzanne.

I did a "Page Break Before" on a heading on p. 36 that was right before
a table breaking across a page. That seemed to make the problem go
away.

-Jeff

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If (too) many of the rows of the table were formatted as "Keep with next,"
Word's little dance could reflect its attempt to keep the heading with the
table and the table together.