PC help: Numbering a document

Q I want to print a single-page document, but within that document I want to have a box that will display a sequential number.

When setting up the document to print, I will print 100 copies of the document. I want to have the first page numbered 1 and the last numbered 100. Page numbering does not work because there is always only one page in the document.

I could copy the page 100 times, but I am sure there must be a better and easier way. Can you help?
Michael Taverner

A Assuming you’re using Microsoft Word and Excel, it’s possible to do this using Word’s mail merge tool.
This is really designed for sending out mailshots and letters to mailing lists, but you can also use it for the purpose you describe.

To do so, open the document and click the Tools menu, then Letters and Mailings, then Mail Merge (this is using Word 2003 – for Word 2007 see the Microsoft tutorial).

In the pane that appears on the right choose Directory from the document type list, then click Next at the bottom of the pane.

Select ‘Use the current document’ then Next again. Now open a blank document in Excel, and make a list in the first column of the numbers 0 to 101 (that’s not an error, it needs to have the extra number at each end) and nothing else, then save this.

Go back to Word and select ‘Use an existing list’, then Browse. Find and open the Excel file we saved earlier and click OK, then OK again in the dialogue boxes that appear.

Click Next again. Now position the cursor in the document where you want the number to appear, click ‘More items’, then in the dialogue box click Insert, then Close. You’ll see <<F1>> appear in grey in the document – this is where the number will appear.

Click Next and you can use the left and right arrow buttons on the next pane to see how the document will look. Click Next one last time and select To New Document, then click OK in the dialogue box. Word will now create a new 100-page document, each page having your text and a different number – you can save this or print it and close it without saving once you’ve finished, because the original will already be saved.

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