Attached is an example to show how the extra page appears between page v and page 1.

I even tried adding a manual page break before the Next Page section break, but no difference.

Attached Files

TEST.docx (132.5 KB, 12 views)

The problem here is likely "Different odd and even pages" which you selected on the Header & Footer Tools Design tab. ("Mirror margins" in Page Setup has the same effect.) The page whose number is restarted to 1 will be forced to the be a right-hand page.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

In your original post, you wrote that your document had 2 sections. The document you attached to your latest post has 7 different sections. It includes 6 Section Breaks:

1 Continuous Section Break
1 Even Page Section Break
4 Next Page Section Break

Are there any practical reasons for so many Section Breaks? For so many different Section Breaks?

Why not use the "Page Break Before" Paragraph attribute when you want a specific paragraph to appear on a new page? Most of the time Section Breaks are overkill.

What’s more, you have paragraphs with the "Page Break Before" attribute immediately following Next Page Section Breaks. This is redundant.

On page 1, you have a tab character in front of the Even Page Section Break. This tab character seems unnecessary.

As I understand things, you want Roman page numbering from start of the document to the end of the TOC. And you want Arabic numbering after the TOC, i.e. for the pages with main document contents.

I have created a modified version of your original document.

I have removed most of the Section Breaks, keeping only one Section Break between the TOC and the main document contents. The page numbering is Roman until the TOC ends. The page numbering is Arabic from the first actual page of the document to end of the document.

Is this what you wanted?

Attached Files

TEST (modified).docx (92.7 KB, 9 views)

Sadly, the multiple sections breaks are all because there are different fields pulling different values in the headers of each of those sections. So, they can't be the same.

In your example, I notice there are no longer different Odd and Even pages. The post before yours mentioned that my issue was because of that style choice. When I apply different Odd and Even pages to your sample, I get the empty page again.

So, I guess the deal is... if I am going to have different Odd and Even pages, I'm going to have to accept that the first page will always start on an Odd page.

If I don't want that, then I need to make the footers universal across the template (for example, numbers in the center) and I have to remove different Odd and Even pages.

THANK YOU ALL for the help today. While I don't have a fix that will allow me to keep the current template, I do have answers to what is possible and what isn't.

I truly appreciate the advice and samples!