Start Page Numbering On Page 2

How To Start Page Numbering On Page 2

Sometimes, you don’t want the first page to have a page number. The first page might be a cover page or have something on it like a table of contents. It’s common to have the page number suppressed on the first page and to have page numbering start on page 2.

If you have already added page numbering to your Word 2013 document, and you then add a cover page, the page numbering is automatically suppressed on the cover page and page numbering starts on page 2. This is what you want. But what if you are amending a document that has the cover page already numbered? You want to remove the page number from the cover page and have page numbers visible on all subsequent pages with page numbering starting at 2.

To do this, make the document’s footer editable by double clicking in the footer area. Go to the Design tab within Header & Footer Tools and make sure that Different First Page is checked.

Double click in the document away from the footer area to return to document editing mode and you should see that the page number from the first page (your cover page) has been removed, and all subsequent pages are numbered. If this didn’t work, it may be that the following has happened.

Beware: even with Different First Page checked, you can still add a page number to the first page by making footers editable (double click in the footer area), place the cursor in the footer area of the first page, go to the Design tab within Header & Footer Tools and click Page Numbers, and select a Bottom of Page layout.

If you are editing a document where this has happened (Different First Page is checked but the first page is still numbered), then simply delete the page number from the first page.

Note that the above procedure still holds true if the page numbers are present in the header. In this case, just double click in the header area and start editing there.