Enjoyed the rant.

VBA the only way, Young Luke.

If you’re still out there, haven’t already found a solution, try this.

In MS Word, Tools/Macro/VB Editor, then open the Immediate Window (View/) in the VB Window. In VB Window, View/Code, then paste the code included further below. Run/Run Sub, results should show in the Immediate Window. You’ll have to take it from there –

Sub AbsolutePageNos()

Dim aPage As Page
Dim intSectionCurr As Integer
Dim intSectionPrev As Integer
Dim intPageDocument As Integer
Dim intPageSection As Integer
Dim intI As Integer

intI = 0
intSectionPrev = 0
intPageSection = 1

For Each aPage In ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.Panes(1).Pages

intPageDocument = aPage.Breaks(1).Range.Information(wdActiveEndPageNumber)
intSectionCurr = aPage.Breaks(1).Range.Information(wdActiveEndSectionNumber)

If intSectionCurr = intSectionPrev Then
intPageSection = intPageSection + 1
Else
intPageSection = 1
End If

Debug.Print “Pg” & intPageDocument & “:” & _
intPageSection & _
“>Section” & intSectionCurr; “”

intSectionPrev = intSectionCurr

Next aPage

End Sub

Yeah. Nowadays I just remove all breaks from the documents, and re-insert them as needed. That’s the only thing that really works.

The solution above tends to give unexpected results if someone deletes a section break by accident. The page numbers then go out of order again, and it becomes progressively harder and harder to fix once the document goes through review process (each person breaks it in their own unique way).

Anyway, thanks! :)

Yeah, you have my sympathy too. I did end-user support at my college library, most of that was Word, and Adobe Acrobat Pro – both of which I think are possibly the worst designed applications ever. I was always thrilled to get an excel question!

Anyhow, we saw that a lot. It could be fixed sometimes by just fiddling (removing the section breaks, entering new/additional ones and new types, copying and pasting the document into a blank one). Sometimes we could even fix it by putting the document in OO.org, then copy/paste back into MS Word (or save the doc in OO.org and open with Word).

Section breaks gave us some of the biggest problems.

BTW, you have a really terrific blog. Everything (short of the anime stuff) is interesting to me, and often issues I’ve wrangled with myself. Thanks, and keep up the good work!

I don’t have an answer, but you have my sympathy. I hate MS Word.