how come i can’t get past chapter (1) in submitting headers & page numbers even I use “all” in setting up, If I go to chapter 26 & do the same it will do so all the way back to chapter (2) but delete chapter (1).
The behavior of headers (whether they’re enabled, or what text appears in them) is controlled by page styles. If you have a fairly simple page lay-out, you can have one page style for the pages with actual content, where you enable the header, and one page style for the opening pages, with title page, TOC, and more where you don’t want a header and page numbers.
I don’t really understand what you describe or what you did, but maybe you have a page style for chapter 1 and another one for all the others. It may help if you upload part of your document (with the text replaced with random characters if the content is private) so that we can see what exactly is wrong with it.