Page numbering in Microsoft Word 365 can be a little bit of a challenge if you want to have more than one numbering system. For example, if you’ve got a header page (cover page) and then a table of contents followed by the rest of the document, which we’ll call the body of the document, and you want the numbering to start with one at the body, but you want the cover page and the table of contents to have no number, there are a few steps you need to do. You will need to use sections.

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How to Insert Page Number in Word from Specific Page.

What I have found, using Word 365, is that if I add a Cover page and then add my page numbering, Word will not put the page number 1 on my cover page, which is good. I added a cover page by clicking Insert from the menu, then Cover Page on the extreme left and I suspect that Word adjusted where it would normally have started page one.

Steps for Practice

Here are the steps you can try to create a page numbering system in the second section of your MS Word 365 document, leaving the first section (cover page, table of contents, and so on) without page numbers.

1. Create a new blank MS Word doc
2. On the first page, type Title page
3. Ctrl+Enter to create a page break
4. Type Table of Contents
5. Ctrl+Enter to insert another page break
6. Type Body of document

Part 2 – Sections

1. Home, click on paragraph icon (Show/Hide) Ctrl=*
2. At the end of page 2 of your document, delete the page break
3. Click the Layout menu and the Breaks drop-down
4. Next Page
5. We now have two sections

Page Numbers in Footer of Body (section 2)

1. Double-Click in the footer on you section 2 “body” page
2. Click the menu button Link to Previous to toggle that off
3. Still in Header and Footer, click Page Number
4. Click Bottom Right or whichever position you prefer
5. Click Page Number again, Format Page Number
6. At the bottom of the pop-up, click Start At and enter 1