Sequentially Numbering Elements in Your Document

Note that this apparently works only in the "Main Document". Allen does not represent otherwise, of course.

However, I saw this great tip while trying to find a way to cause 3 sequential numbers to generate and appear on the same text line within a footer of a multipage document. So when I tried it inside the footer, the fields did appear to "create" just fine, but upon "updating" (F9), it returns "Error! Main Document Only".

Is there another method than can work inside a footer?

In case anyone wonders why this might be desirable: This document is a printable "form" for manual (pen/pencil) data entry during Duplicate Bridge (it's used for "post mortem" bidding review). It's a 6 column table presented within 3 columns on each of several pages (landscape, so it can be tri-folded). The 1st table row repeats, so it gets reproduced at the top of each of the 3 columns on every page. See (see Figure 1 below) . It works great "as is" & I really don't "have to" change it. However, because game boards don't get played in sequential order, later moving back & forth between data located within different "columns" on multiple pages gets confusing. I was hoping to make that navigation "easier" by adding "column references" to identifying each of the 3 apparent columns on each page uniquely (sequentially) within the footer of that same page (assuming the sequential numbering would continue from page to page, as psge numbering does). When that failed, I also tried just "plain text" identification for each column on each page, intending to create a different footer with different text for each page. But that required inserting section breaks, which messes up how the whole table works.

(Sorry this was so long.)

Paul

Two points:

1. "If you have added multiple SEQ fields and you want to update them all, then you'll need to select the entire document (Ctrl+A) and then press F9." Or select File > Print, then return to the document.

2. I don't understand why someone would bother with manual field codes when they could more easily select the table or figure, then select Insert Caption from the context menu. What am I missing? (see Figure 1 below)

Thanks for updating this tip. I've been tearing my hair out trying to work out to to automate the numbering of a large number of illustrations in the text an article I'm writing. There will be suggestions of new illustrations and reordering of illustrations by co-writers and I didn't want to have to go through the whole thing figure by figure each time they changed. This was perfect for my situation. Many thanks.