It used to be very easy to add the text “Page X of Y” to your header in Microsoft Word. However in the new Microsoft Word, Word 2010, adding Page X of Y to your header is easy to do, but just takes a lot more steps.
So here’s how to add a “Page X of Y” section to your header of footer in Word 2010. It’s a pain in the neck but it gets the job done until I find a faster way.
1. Navigate to your header or footer area. To quickly access your header area, head to the very top part of your document and double-left-click. The “header” label should appear.
2. Let’s assume you want some plain text on the top left, and the page numbers it on the top right. So within your header type your page text. In this example I typed “HelpSpa.com is a great resource.”
We’re going to align “Page X of Y” to the right side of the page, so make sure your cursor is located right after your left-side text is complete, as in the picture above.
3. Now, still within the “Header & Footer Tools Design” tab, click “Insert Alignment Tab”, and then click “right in the menu that appears”. Then click ok.
4. Now that the cursor has moved to the right, let’s start typing your Page X of Y text. First type “Page”.
5. Now’s where it gets annoying. Head to the Insert menu (e.g. File, Home, Insert, Page Layout, etc) and then find the “Quick Parts” icon at the top right of the menu. Click the “field” option.
6. You will now be presented with a list of Word 2010 fields. Navigate down and find the “Page” field and click it (or just press ok with it selected).
You should now see “Page 1” in your document.
7. Go ahead and type “of” so your document now says “Page 1 of”.
8. Now all we have left to do is add the “Y”, the total number of pages in the document, to the numbering. So navigate back to the field list (see Step 5), and this time click on the “NumPages” field and press OK. You should now see the total number of pages appear next to the word “of”. In my case I have a two page document so I see the number “2” automatically added.
…and you’re done. Previous versions of Microsoft Word had autotext that made this a heck of a lot easier. But until I can find a quicker way to set this up, the above is my current method of adding “Page X of Y” to the header of a Word 2010 document.