Using Pages Numbers and Sections In Pages

You can easily put the page numbers for you document in the header or footer. You can also control which page number your document starts with, and use sections to skip between page numbers. Learning how to use the header, footer and sections is important if you are creating larger Pages documents.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at page numbers and sections in Pages.
We're looking at Pages version 5. Let's say you want to put page numbers on your documents. I've got a document here that has multiple pages on it. Now I notice if I move my cursor over the top here I'll get the Header up here. It is divided into three sections. Likewise the bottom of the page I'll see the Footer.
So let's say I want to put the page number in the Header in the upper right. I click on there and it instantly knows, pretty much most of the time, that when you click here you want the page number. You can click on anyone of these and get that. So it is very easy to just insert the page number there. Then I can select a style.
I've inserted the page number here. Now the neat thing is that you notice it's also here on page two and it's on page three because the Header goes between all of the different pages of this document. I don't have to insert it anywhere else. It is always there.
Likewise I could, you know, put something like Num and then you will see this also repeated on each individual one. So it knows. I can even put over here the title of something and you can see it is always going to appear there. The same thing with the Footer.
Now besides having that automatic thing where, you know, it comes up and says do you want the page number here, you can also use Insert and insert the Page Number, the Page Count, Date & Time. So I can say Page Number and then type of and Page Count for instance and you can see it will appear on every page. So that is how you do that manually if you don't want to use that automatic button there.
Page numbers can be controlled a little bit. Let's open up the View here and show Thumbnails so I see all the pages and the page numbers on the left. Notice how this first page here is larger and then these other ones are kind of under it. That is because these pages are all part of a Section that starts with this page. We can control sections and use these sections to do things with the page numbers.
So I'm going to select Setup over here and you can see the second tab in Setup is for Section. The thing about Sections here is I can control page numbering in them. So, for instance, I can change the page numbering format to A,B,C. You can see how it changed to an A right there. So I have some control like that.
Now I can go to a place in the text. Let's go to a place in the middle of page 4. Say I want to start a new section right here. I can insert a Section Break and notice what happens. I have Page 1, 2, 3, and 4. These are smaller showing that they are under page one with page one the beginning of a section. 
Now Page 5 is the beginning of a new section. The page numbers still work. They still go from 4 to 5. But I don't have to have it that way. I can actually change it because I can change it from Continue from previous section to Start at something else.
So this can start back at page one. So you can say go from page 4 to page 1 if I wanted each section to have its own numbering or say if I was inserting a bunch of pages like I have one section from this Page's document and then I had a few pages inserted that were photos or something and I knew that this was going to pick up at page 10 I could do that. I could say page 4 to page 10.
I can also play with Headers between sections. So right now the Headers are the same and they have this kind of silly Num:. If I want to get rid of that I could do that now for all of these. So I could say let's get rid of that here and do it where it says something like Section 1:page 4. There we go. So if I do that and I go here and it says Section 1 and page 10 and it's not right. We want this to be, say, section 3. I can turn off Headers & Footers match previous section and now I can change it to Section 3 or Section B or something like that.
So now I've got Section 1 and Section 3. So my Headers and Footers can change if I turn this off between sections. 
I should also point out that you can insert page numbers anywhere you want. Not just in Headers and Footers. I could put something like This is page and insert this Page Number right there. If I were to move this text here to another page, like hit return a bunch of times, you can see that it is Page 11. So you have that ability.

Comments: 7 Responses to “Using Pages Numbers and Sections In Pages”

nick

11 years ago

hi Gary
timely show..I have a document with only 2 sections and as you said, in the thumbnail view all the pages after the first page in each section are indented. However I have one spot within a section where one page is not indented (i.e. looks like the beginning of a section) and the rest are. I turned on the Invisibles to look for a Section code but don't see any.
Appreciate any hints if this makes sense to you :)
thx
nick

Gary Rosenzweig

Really hard to say without being there. You'll just have to experiment and play around with it to find out where the problem lies.

thanks - not a big deal, doesn't seem to affect anything...

Saundra C. Peiss

This was just the info I needed now.
I save all of the MacMost Newsletters, is there an index or table of contents available that will update with each new MacMost Newsletter? I need to find answers to questions as they arise!
Thanks,
Saundra

Click on the Videos link at the top of any page at MacMost and you'll get a list of videos by category. Or, better still, use the search box up there to find things quickly.

Lynn

Gary, great video as always. How do I omit the page number on the first page of my document and begin numbering on page 2 (numbered as page 2)?

A few ways to do it. Click on the footer on page 2 and you'll see the option to start a new footer for pages 2-X. Set the page numbering like you want. Then go back to page 1 and edit the footer there to remove the page number.

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Using Pages Numbers and Sections In Pages

Comments: 7 Responses to “Using Pages Numbers and Sections In Pages”

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