Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Creating Point Pages.

Creating Point Pages

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 24, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021


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Larry works for a government contractor that produces very large documents—commonly hundreds or even thousands of pages. When they issue updates to the documents, it is done using "point pages." This means that if the update adds some pages between pages 42 and 43 of the existing document, then those pages are numbered as 42.1 and 42.2. Larry was wondering if there was a way in Word to create point pages and have the page numbering done correctly.

The only way to do this is to, within the document, insert a new section that will contain the point pages. The new section should be formatted so that it doesn't use the same header or footer (wherever you have the page numbers) as the previous section. In addition, the section following the point pages (the original document) will need to have its header or footer formatted to match the original formatting so that it doesn't continue the header or footer in the point pages.

In the new section—the one for the point pages—you can set up the header or footer to reflect the new numbering you want. For instance, you could define a footer that contained "Page 42." (note that this is text, and not a dynamic page number) and follow this text with a page number. Start the page numbering for the section at 1, and you will end up with 42.1, 42.2, 42.3, etc. for all the pages in the new section—the part after the decimal point is the dynamic page number for the section.

In the section that follows the point pages, you'll need to configure the page numbers so that they start with whatever number they should begin with, such as page 43. This allows the page numbering to proceed as it should, until the next point pages section is reached.

You should note that this approach doesn't work well if you need to include any of the point pages in a TOC or an index. The reason is that Word doesn't see the "prefix" on the point pages ("42") as part of the page number; it only sees the restarted numbering. Thus, in the TOC or the index you would see 1, 2, 3 instead of 42.1, 42.2, or 42.3.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8059) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Creating Point Pages.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is 6 - 0?

2022-12-26 21:19:00

Ron S

"Point Pages" are a useless left over from old technology, ie typewriter, manual typeset printing, and printed documentation.
.
Granted, printed manuals still do have a place, in some situations.
One situation is requirements imposed on you by forces outside of your company, ie government regulations.

But for purely internal documents, if you can, encourage your manager (and users) to move to an online format for the document.

That way all users look at the same source document. Update in one place, no manual user intervention required.

I know, it is not simple to overcome corporate inertia to move from paper to online. You'll hear the "but we've always done it that way" whine.

It has several advantages:
. * no need to kill trees to print manuals
. * no need to create "point pages" to update print manuals
. * everyone looks at the same file, so everyone is up to date all the time
. * creating point pages in a Word document adds complexity to the file structure that can lead to document corruption in the long term!


2022-12-26 03:19:40

John Summers

Robert It is a bit too early on Boxing Day to think clearly, but it might be possible to construct a macro which identifies the last page number from the previous section and pass it as a variable to provide the first part of the point page number notation..


2022-12-24 06:50:07

Robert Love

I'm sure this is the best Word can manage, but it's pretty clunky. If the document is modified so that there are now more or fewer pages before the point pages, then the page numbering configuration of the point pages section and the section following it need to be manually corrected. This may or may not be a significant trap: it may not be if the whole idea of the point pages is that the document section before them is never changed.


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