[Alchemy]

I am preparing a children's book for print with Createspace. All was going well until Word confounded me with its arcane art of page numbering. On certain pages with illustrations, I simply don't want a page number to appear. Such a simple thing seems very complicated to achieve. My googling so far has only served to confuse me.

Can anyone please suggest the simplest solution, or point me to an online resource that perhaps can?

 

[Hildred]

As far as I know, the only way to "skip" a page number is by creating a section break and assigning that section no page numbers. (You can see how to create a section break here.) When you wish to resume the page numbers, create a section break again. It's possible the page numbers will try to start over from 1. Simply delete the 1 and replace it with the number you want to start with and the following numbers will adjust. If you have a lot of illustrations, it could become quite tedious. But as far as I know, that's the only way to do what you want.

 

[Alchemy]

Fantastic. Thank you both very much for your help. 

I took the new section break approach, unlinking it to previous and following sections, and simply deleting the page number in the single page section with each illustration. A bit messy but it works.

 

[Jan Strnad]

"A bit messy" is being very kind to the Word developers.

Microsoft keeps reinventing its Office programs without addressing some of the basic issues people have had for decades with them. Word's frustrating handling of page numbering is probably my pet peeve with the program, yet Microsoft apparently sees nothing wrong with it.

Maybe we need to start some kind of online petition.