Most people know how to add page numbers at the bottom of their documents. You just go into Header and Footer view, click the little number icon and voila, the page number prints on every page. But fewer folks know that you also can add snazzier page numbers almost as easily. For example, you can put "Page 1 of 24" at the bottom of the document. As your document gets longer, Word automatically increases the number.
How you add this information varies slightly, depending on your version of Word. When you switch to Header and Footer view, you see the Header and Footer toolbar. Older versions of Word have slightly different buttons. In Word 97 or 2000, type the word "Page" and a space in your header or footer and then click the Insert Page Number button. Now type another space, the word "of" and a space. In the Header and Footer toolbar, click the Insert Number of Pages button.
Older versions of Word don’t have the Insert Number of Pages button, but you can still add the number of pages. Just choose Insert|Field and select NumPages. Here’s another little twist on the problem for Word 2000 users. If you have the first release of Word 2000, the NumPages field is broken. Everything looks okay on the screen, but instead of printing out "Page 1 of 24" it prints "Page 1 of 1," "2 of 2," and so on. This problem can be frustrating, but there are a couple of workarounds.
The first (and easiest) workaround is to upgrade Word 2000 to the latest Service Release, which is a good idea anyway. You can find downloadable Service Releases on Microsoft’s Web site (www.microsoft.com) or you can usually get them on CD as well. If you just have to get the document done right now, you also can cheat. First, insert a bookmark at the end of your document (choose Insert|Bookmark). Then, where you would have used the NumPages field, insert a PageRef field that references the bookmark at the end of the document instead. The trick is to make sure that if you add more text later, you keep the bookmark at the end of the document.