Paul my question really is: How did I get to this situation in my document:

After I do a Footer, Edit footer:

1. When I click on odd footer numbers, I get a text box surrounding the footer.

2. When I click on even footer number, the number gets a gray background and no text box.

I have a long document (over 200 pages) with this problem so I can't edit each page separately. I need the text box so that I can use the format commands to position certain numbers manually. This is because my book has sections which alternate between portrait and landscape.

Chaim

If there is a gray background around the page numbers in both even and odd, that is likely display of shading for fields. (The page number is a field.)

The idea of headers and footers is that it is repeating text. Ideally, you set it once for each type of footer and it repeats throughout the document.

If it is not doing this you have numerous, possibly unneeded, section breaks.

Sections / Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2007-2013

Using Paul's instructions I created a text box around the first footer which did not have a text box. All subsequent footers then had a text box.

Thanks for everyone's help.