Is there away to skip the first three pages and number the rest?

I am trying to do a dissertation, and my school requires us to skip the first 3 pages from numbering, and have the rest numbers. I cannot seem to figure out how to do this, I have been trying.

The first three pages are the Title page, the school certification page, and then the table of contents, is there any way to not have these numbered, and yet number the rest of the pages in the dissertation?

Thank you so much for your help!

Many blessings,

GoddessCMD

1 Like

Page numbers (and header/footer) are attributes of page styles. Consequently, you need to trigger change of page style to conform to the requirement.

If you really want to have maximum versatility, according to your description, you should use 4 page styles (title, certification, TOC and body).

Start by defining the required page styles (keep Default Style for your document body):

  • Open the style side pane (F11)
  • Click on the fourth small icon in the toolbar, the one with a page symbol (Page Styles)
  • Right-click somewhere in the white space of the list and choose New
  • In Organizer tab, give a Name (eg “Title”)
  • Set or check margins in Page tab
  • Make sure Footer on is not checked in Footer tab (except for Default Style)
  • Eventually, check Header on in Header tab if you want a header in this style
  • Click OK

Note: you can modify your settings at any time by right-clicking on the style name and choosing Modify.

Put your cursor in the first page and double-click on the Title page style name. All your document is now under the Title style.

Put your cursor at the location(s) where page style should change. Insert>Manual Break. In the dialog which pops up, select Type “Page break” and select the new page style from the Style drop-down menu (certification, TOC or Default Style for the document main body).

Note: in case you already inserted page breaks, it is easier to delete them first.

Once the structure of the document is done, you can tune the presentation of each part.

Where you need a header or page number, click in the header/footer area (it is easier to see where this part is really located when you enable View>Formatting Marks). Type your header or Insert>Fields>Page Number for page number.

To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!

1 Like

Thank you!

That’s it! Thanks!

Only this solution works if you want any non-numbered pages in the middle or at the end of your document (such as novels etc.).

To make page 4 into page 1, all you need to do is insert a page break and reset the page numbering.

To get the appearance correct, you need to set up at least two page styles, one with the page number in the header/footer and one without. Start the document with the page style without numbering, and insert a page break after the content of the third page (Insert → Manual Break). In the settings for the break, change to the style with numbering and reset the page numbering.

If you also want to display the page count, this might be a problem. When I tried to do it, all pages were counted, plus one more, so page 4 became page 1/5. This might be a bug.

This might be a bug

No, it is not a bug, it is counting the automatically inserted empty pages (when you manually set a page number, Writer may need to add a page to keep even/odd pages; that is visible on print preview).

That’s really surprising. Also, I don’t see an extra page in the print preview, and this is with the setting “print automatically inserted blank pages” checked.

Update: I got the blank page to display. No idea why it wasn’t working at first. Is there a way to disable this feature?

When “Print automatically inserted blank pages” is checked, my 6.1.0.3 shows the blank on the preview. So that could be some version problem.

When the setting is not checked, then yes, we most probably should not count the pages in status bar either, and yes, that should be the bug.

EDIT: this is tdf#52316.

If I were you, I would add Title pages.

Choose Format > Title Page from the Menu bar.
On the Title Page dialog, you can convert first 3 pages to title pages.

You can restart page numbering whatever number to start with.

image description

(LibreOffice Writer Guide, p.114)

Thank you!

This was the best, because you gave me the page to refer to in the guide. I was able to get the three pages sorted so now I have it numbered correctly…Thank you so much!!!