I am finalizing a book for print and have mastered almost all of Microsoft Word 2007 idiosyncracies but one has me stymied and I cannot find anything in google searches to correct my situation. Any help appreciated.



The problem is relate too changing a document from normal margins to mirror margins in order to include a proper gutter for publishing. In doing this my document suddenly decides to change my pagination. I believe it is somehow related to the Sections issue of odd and even but no amount of fiddling or searching has helped solve the issue.

The issue is... I have a word document which is properly paginated for printing without gutters. I have inserted sections in order to facilitate my numbering, borders and other section related enhancements. I have used a combination of odd and next page sections dependant upon my specific needs for proper page placement in the finished publication.

In order to publish duplexed I require mirrored margin gutters. When I insert normal gutters through the page setup screen my page numbering is correct, however, as soon as I change the gutter margin to mirrored Word 2007 adds a page. This would not normally be an issue as it is adding it to the odd page but the placement of my pages, as specifically placed, is critical to the final apearance in the published work.

Any help in a workaround to this issue is greatly appreciated. As a footnote, I am conversant in Word usage but I have not spent much time with macros or VBA in Word. Reason it is far to convoluted unless one intends to make this a career (I have studied multiple languages in the past and even fortran was simpler to decode than this).

Thanks
Doug

When you enable "Mirror margins," Word ensures that odd page numbers always display on the right and that even page numbers display on the left. You can't get around this, if that's what you're asking.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

So is this also why when I use the section break even I cannot use an odd number as a page number?

I need my second page which is defined as a new page section to have a number 1 page number but no matter what I do word does not seem to allow this. Left pages (even) seem to get even numbers only.

I can work around and take the page out in PDF after it is saved but this seems a dumb workaround when all the capabilities are available in Word

Why did Microsoft allow odd, even, next sections if they they then force us into something else at a later point?

Thanks for clarifying what I thought was the case, unfortunately, it still doesn't get me where I need to be.

Maybe because it's a short book I will recompose in publisher. I like the PDF options better than those in Word because then I know the quality level it is being saved at whereas Word only says standard publishing or printing and I have no idea what quality levels it is actually saving the document at.

Exactly.

But note that left page = even-numbered page and right page = odd-numbered is printing standard; it isn't just Microsoft making your life difficult. :-)

Publisher might very well be a better choice in this case, yes.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional