Hi all,

I've written a book and I'm having a bear of a time with getting the page numbering to work properly. Here's what I have:

Section 1



i Title page - page number on the right, which is correct
ii Copyright page - page number on the left, which is correct

Section 2 (needed to keep the table of contents starting at i)

i Table of contents - page number on the right, correct
ii Table of contents - page number on the left, correct
iii Table of contents - page number on the right, correct
iv Acknowledgements - page number on the left, correct
v Introduction - page number on the right, correct

Section 3

*** After this point all page numbers are on the left side. So all even pages are incorrect.

Page 1 - on the left, which is correct
Page 2 - on the left, which is incorrect
Page 3 - on the left, which is correct
Page 4 - on the left, which is incorrect

If I try to change Page 2 to have the page number on the right side it fixes page 2 and every page after, but it causes all the pages prior to Page 2 (the roman numeral pages) to now be on the right which means all even pages are incorrect.

The simplest way to explain it is that at the point where I have marked with *** ... I have two choices. I can have the page numbers alternating before that point, if I do this all the page numbers after that point will not alternate. Or I can choose to have the page numbers before that point not alternate, in which case all the page numbers after that point will alternate.

I tried adding in a "this page intentionally left blank" page to see if this would change the behavior, it does not. At this point I'm stuck. I don't know how to get this weird behavior to stop. Any thoughts?

I am about to head home now and don't have time to think this through completely. I will return to it later this evening. In the meantime, some reading for you:
Sections / Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2007-2013
The page numbers are ancillary to headers and footers. It is headers and footers you need to understand.
The following may also be of use:
Numbering Front Matter (Ribbon)

Following up, again, headers and footers are the key.
These are properties of sections. Every section has three headers and three footers even if you never see them. A page can have multiple sections; a section can have multiple pages.
Header/Footer Settings Recap

You can have a first-page (of the section) header, an odd-page header, and an even-page header. The same is true of footers. Page numbers, to be shown only on even-numbered pages, go in the even-page header or footer.

Each kind of header/footer can be independently "linked" to the header/footer of the same kind in the preceding section, or not.

Thanks for the link. I think I figured it out. I had 4 sections, all of them said they were linked to the section before. I disconnected all the sections and renumbered them from scratch. It looks right but to be sure I'll have to convert it to PDF, send it to the publisher, and have a copy printed. Fingers crossed.