Page Numbering in WORD

When writing our thesis or dissertation in WORD, we usually encounter the page numbering problem which is HOW TO:

1. Hide the page number for the first two pages.
2. Show page numbers on say page x to page y in roman alphabet.
3. And the rest of the page numbers in Arabic (1, 2, ...) format starting from one.

There are two ways to do this. The first way is to make three different documents having different page numbering formats and print them separately. I have followed this for a long time and it is time for a change.

The second method is actually time consuming to learn but I will show you a copy paste method to get your job done. After all that's what WORD does for us.

Follow these 5 small steps to get the work done.

1. Download THIS one page word file.
2. Open the file and double click on the footer section in the file. Press ALT F9 if you don't see anything.
3. You should see two lines which look as shown below. Copy the lines and paste it where ever your want your page number to appear (usually in the footer).
   
   { IF { = ({ IF { PAGE } > 2 1 0 }+ { IF { PAGE } <= 5 1 0 } ) } = 2 "{ PAGE \*roman }" "" }
   {IF { = ( { IF { PAGE } > 5 1 0 } + { IF { PAGE } <= { NUMPAGES } 1 0 } ) } = 2 "{ = { PAGE } - 5 \*arabic }" "" }
   
   Note: Please do not copy the above code. The curly brackets should have been inserted using CTRL F9 to tell WORD that it is a field code. So copy it from the downloaded file only.


4. The code you have copied shows roman numbers after page 2 till page 5. So change the numbers to match your requirements (in exactly 6 places).
5. Then press ALT F9 and see the magic.

Note: To change the font and size of the two lines you copied as you want the page numbers to appear. Refer to the following links to learn about fields in WORD.

References

http://word.mvps.org/faQs/Numbering/PageNumbering.htm

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/CH100992711033.aspx

http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/211363

Frequent Wireless Router Disconnections

Problem: Frequent wireless disconnections when laptops with different operating systems (windows 7, MAC, etc.) are connected to the router.

Solution: Upgrade the firmware of the router to the latest version.

Details: We use a WRT54G router and two laptops running Vista connect to this wireless router. We discovered that whenever a friend visits us and tries to connect his/her laptop which runs Windows 7/MAC OS, all the laptops connected to the router get disconnected for a short while and then reconnect before getting disconnected. This cycle continues until only two laptops use the router. We tried a lot of things and finally, upgrading the firmware of the router to the latest version worked. This might be because the older firmware version was released before Windows 7 was introduced.

Apparently, frequent wireless disconnections could also be due to various other factors such as hardware incompatibilities. But if you are facing this problem, there is no harm in trying to upgrade the firmware of your router. It is easy.