I have a 80 page document which has really weird page numbering.


It starts at 1, then at 3 starts at 1 again, then 7, 9, 13, 16, and then starts again at page 4.

I tried removing the footers, inserting and removing page numbers - it is all the same, wrong page numbers everywhere.

Have you viewed the document with hidden characters displayed? That will allow you to see section breaks. I suspect that there are lots of them; perhaps someone "carefully" inserted them when pasting in material from other documents.

Footers are a section characteristic. Your page umbers may be autonumbered, simply typed in, or (my guess), a combination of both. In any case, autonumbered page numbers (i.e., fields) pertain to a section at a time.

Unless there is some reason not to, e.g., multiple columns on some pages, I would see if you can eliminate the section breaks. Once done, setting the page numbering using Words page numbering should make life fairly simple.

Does this help?

Showing non-printing formatting marks in Microsoft Word

As was pointed out, page numbering is a Section property. It can be changed in each section.

Sections / Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2007-2013