The screen shots are not as helpful as the actual document would be.

Page numbering is a function of sections. The numbering is changed in the Format Page Numbers dialog. Insert > Page Numbers > Format Page Numbers.

You can tell sections to start on an even or odd page. Doing this will create a blank page (no header/footer) if needed.

It is unusual to restart page numbers at the beginning of each section.

See Numbering Front Matter (Ribbon) and Sections / Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2007-2013.

I fixed it. Patched it up sort of. By merging sections. It seems there were hidden pages or paragraphs that I may have inserted somehow. I am using the Createspace doc file, so I'm not sure if that presents formatting problems when using it in MW 2013. I am not able to upload the file as it is too large. The fi is not perfect and I have not resolved the original issue, it's a workaround. I'd love to actually figure it out as I plan on working on a number of projects with MW 2013 in the future.

When you add an Odd Page or Even Page section break, word adds "filler" pages whenever necessary, to ensure that the new section starts on an odd (even) page number. These filler pages can only be seen in Print Preview, and you must enable "Different odd and even" and/or "Mirror margins" in the Page Setup dialog box for the filler pages to be added correctly. For more, see the articles that Charles has linked to.

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

When I would change the numbering in one of the sections, say section 6, which was part of the front material, it affected the numbering in the next section. So I put Roman numeral X, and then the number in section 7 changed to X too. I unlinked the sections but pressing unlink to previous and that seemed to work, but it didn't work for the next section. I tried formatting page numbers under the design tab, but it didn't seem to have any effect. Then when I went down and tried to change the numbers on the even page, it changed all the numbers on the even pages to the same number. And the same thing happened with the odd pages too. I don't know how much sense this is making. I understand now that it has to do with sections. the thing is I'm using a document created by Createspace, so I don't know if I should just try to create my own document to work in or is there a way to fix this problem that won't have me at it for another two days. Thanks for your time and help.

I'm completely lost. I've tried removing all sections and just working with one long continuous document, but the page numbers are still acting totally weird. The odd numbered pages are all the same and the even numbered pages are all the same. It's infuriating. I've searched and searched. It seems no one else has had this problem that I can find. Why do the odd and even numbers not number themselves 1 after the other, but rather copy each other. So I type 2 and all the even pages are numbered 2. I go down and number the next one 4, now the previous one and all the others are numbered 4. I'm going around in circles here.