Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 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: Repaginating Your Document in a Macro.

Repaginating Your Document in a Macro

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 9, 2020)

It is common to use macros to modify documents in some way. For instance, you might use a macro to insert text or to insert page, column or section breaks. Doing any of these actions can affect the pagination of a document, sometimes dramatically. If you modify the document using a macro, and then try to determine the page count of the document (using the BuiltInDocumentProperties property), Word will not return the proper number of pages. Instead, it will return the page count before the changes were made.

The solution is to always make sure that you force Word to repaginate before trying to determine the page count. The following method will do the repagination:

ActiveDocument.Repaginate

After this method has been executed, you can safely (and confidently) use the BuiltInDocumentProperties property to determine the current page count.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9597) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Repaginating Your Document in a Macro.

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. Learn more about Allen...

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