Beware When Page Numbering Goes Haywire
The Problem:
The page numbering in my document has gone nuts. Help!
The Solution:
Red flag! This usually means that the document has become corrupted. Recover it immediately as follows:
-
Choose File
Save As and save a copy of the document under a new name (rather than overwriting the current version with any outstanding unsaved changes). This is your primary backup of the document, but you should also save the document in other formats (as described in the rest of this list) in case this document turns out to be too corrupted to use. -
Choose File
Save as Web Page, make sure the "Save entire file into HTML" option is selected (rather than the "Save only display information into HTML" option, which dispenses with non-display items such as headers and footnotes), and then click the Save button. This HTML version of the document contains almost all the contents of the Word document and is saved in a stable format. -
With the document still open, choose Edit
Select All, hold down Shift, and press 
to deselect the last paragraph mark in the document. (The last paragraph mark is the default section break, which contains the master formatting table for the document.) Press 
+C to copy the selection, and then press +N to create a new blank document. Press +V to paste in what you copied, press +S to save the document as a backup, and then press +W to close the document.
Now reopen the document you saved in Step 1 and see if it is usable. If not, use the document you saved in Step 3 instead. If this document too proves corrupted, use the HTML document you saved in Step 2 as the last resort for re-creating the document.
Tip: OpenOffice.org (free from http://www.openoffice.org) is very good at opening corrupt Word documents and recovering their contents.