I’ve tried your recommended format - paragraph - text flow and it simply doesn’t work. When I do insert - fields - page number it will only start at 1. When I change it to 20, every page is 20 instead of 21, 22, etc. I’ve been at this for hours and tried all the online advice I can find. Very frustrated.
There are a number of possible issues in what you describe and it will help if you provide greater detail above exactly what it is you are wanting to achieve. For example: (a) start a document on page 5; (b) after a paragraph on page 12 I want to have the page numbering skip a page so I can insert some separately prepared material; etc. You refer to the “format - paragraph - text flow” menu option, which is presumably a reference to the instructions given on this help page section.
Start a document on page N (case a):
- Set the first page of a document to use the First Page page style.
- Ensure the header/footer area is visible.
- Click into the first paragraph of your document.
- Choose Format - Paragraph - Text flow.
- In the Breaks area, enable Insert. Enable With Page Style just to be able to set the new Page number. Click OK.
- Now click in the header/footer area of the page and insert your page number.
Skip N pages in the page numbering (case b): Follow the same instructions from point #3 but chose the logical desired paragraph. Another method mentioned on that page is to insert a manual page break and associate a page style (and new commencing page number). This is really only effective for case b.
Note that the first page of a document is usually an odd (right/recto) page. If you want the first page to be an even number LO will automatically produce a blank preceding odd (right/recto) page and place the leading content on the first left/verso page.