Writer: Various Problems With Page Numbering

[DinoNerd]

I am attempting my first document. I want a title page, with no headers or footers. I want all the other pages to have a header that includes “Page x of y”.

I inserted a title page ahead of the empty document. I used “Insert title page”. It’s a FirstPage.The others are DefaultPage. I told Writer that page numbering should not include the first page. I modified the DefaultPage style to have a header that contained the desired “page x of y”.

Now I have 1 title page and 2 body pages. The body pages are labelled “Page 1 of 4” and “Page 2 of 4”. When I use “go to page”, selecting page 1 and page 2 both take me to the title page. 3 and 4 take me to the first and second body page.

So I have two problems:

1. I want the number of pages in the page header to count only numbered pages.
2. I want to get rid of the invisible (to me) page 2.

Of course I’m not sure exactly where I found each of these things in the various menus, and may not have exactly remembered the text strings involved. But I’m hoping I’ve got enough here for an experienced user to understand what I did, and suggest how to do what I actually wanted.

[EarnestAl]

If you look at File > Print Preview you should see the blank page, the title page verso which is the back of the title page. I guess Format > Title Page > Insert… always inserts a whole sheet (2 sides) as it can be inserted anywhere in the document, see Using title pages in your document

I suppose what you wanted to do was to open a new document, right-click the the Status bar at the bottom of the window where it says Default Page Style and select First Page, then click Insert > More Breaks > Manual Break. In the dialogue that opens select Page Break, then under Page Style select Default Page Style, tick the box Change Page Number and leave it at 1.

You can change what you have by deleting page breaks and re-inserting them but, as you are at the beginning, it is probably best to start afresh.

[ajlittoz]

Count only numbered pages

Field Page Count counts all pages numbered or not. Consequently, there is no built-in field to fulfil your requirement.

The solution is to use cross-references but you’re only discovering Writer, so I’ll only sketch the solution without going into all details. I recommend you practice a bit Writer and read the Writer Guide before addressing this problem.

You create a reference point at the end of your to-be-counted sequence of pages. In the header, you Insert>Field>More Fields from Cross-references. You take the reference you created previously and use its page number.

Get rid of blank page 2

You requested to start page numbering from 1 after First Page. Writer now considers that odd-numbered pages must always be laid out at right while even-numbered pages always at left, even if your document is not printed duplex. There is no way to circumvent this, even trying to outsmart Writer with custom page styles.

Final remark: for best advice, always mention OS name, LO version and save format as there are subtle differences between platforms and releases and, most important, most formatting is guaranteed only when saved in native format.