Showing page numer and total page count in TOC

[Ulodesk]

Greetings, Word experts. I call again on those of you in the fields, if you'll pardon the pun. Here's my problem:

In a forthcoming proposal, the RFP issuer has stipulated that the TOC include both page number and total pages with each entry. Thus, for example:


A. Executive Summary .................1 of 60
B. Proposed Solution ....................5 of 60

(I have never seen this requirement before, but such is life.)

We have no problem numbering pages appropriately. At present, in the footers, we are using a Page field set to include the chapter number (a letter in this case, as in the example above), text "of", and then a Numpages field.
I also tried creating a bookmark at the final paragraph of the document and using a pageref field instead of the numpages one.

In neither case does the total page count display in the TOC. Perhaps you already knew that.

What we get is

A. Executive Summary ..........A-1

We can do without the included chapter designation, but not the "of 60".

I have spent an hour or so, both trying to insert additional fields into the TOC field (TOC is being generated by References/Custom Table of Contents) and trying to find a solution on the web, this forum included, to no avail. What I have seen is a number of references to workarounds for other problems involving numbering field conflicts, but my knowledge of fields is too limited to sort them out and apply specifics to this case. I understand that the relevant numbering is a section property, but the complexities elude me.

To be clear, therefore: This is a document that will have sections, but pages will be numbered consecutively, other than front matter, which gets the usual small Roman numerals, followed by pages with Arabic numbers starting with 1.

A member of our team says he once crafted a similar solution, but only toward the very end of production; it was not a permanent solution and could not be updated, was quite complicated and took him hours.

Short of removing hyperlinks and typing in the missing "of 60", or Rube Goldberging some strange concoction, is there a way to construct a TOC that will incorporate the now missing page total and be normally updatable?

Many thanks.

[Charles Kenyon]

Your team member is at the state of the art. Sorry. He is right that it is something to be done at the very end of the project because any change to the TOC will require re-doing everything.

I'm curious as to why you are using chapter numbering, i.e. A-1, B-5, etc. This is normally only used when one is restarting numbering in each logical section. That, in itself, is a bad idea but is used widely.

Also, be aware of the SECTIONPAGES field.

Here are my references on Tables of Contents:
How to create a table of contents in Microsoft Word by Shauna Kelly
Generating a Table of Contents - Complex Documents

They do not provide a solution to your problem and you have probably already seen them. I list them in case they may help with other problems.

If I were submitting a bid, I think I would give two bids, one with, and the other without this strange feature.

[Ulodesk]

That particular report of mine falls under the age-old disclaimer, "Don't shoot the messenger.;" I was reporting a decision made by others, at this early stage of the initiative; it may or may not carry through.

In any case, thanks for your response. We'll present our finding to the larger team and see if including the numpages field in the footer is actually adequate, as it should be, or if we will need to freeze the TOC at the end and add the requisite tail to each line.

Best,
Philip

[Charles Kenyon]

Note, the NUMPAGES field will not give a correct number. It will include your front matter pages.

You can get around this with a calculation field.

How to control the page numbering in a Word document

For having different page numbering schemes on the same page see Page Numbering Different in Headers and Footers

[Charles Kenyon]

BTW, more than I know or ever hope to know about fields can be found in the articles by Paul Edstein (macropod) pinned to the top of this forum. The attachments have live examples and are worth downloading and perusing.

They do not have a solution to this problem, though.

[macropod]

FWIW, Word has no facility for incorporating the page count in a TOC field.

You could work around this by putting the TOC field in a two-column table, with the second column being used to hold just the 'of 60'. You would have to take care of the alignment of the entries by manual methods, though a field calculation could be used to generate the '60'.