This crazy friend of mine is always volunteering to do things that are, as she puts it, "outside my comfort zone." She loves a challenge, and not knowing how to do something is no excuse, in her mind, for not doing it--one must learn new things to stay sharp, and sharp she is. Here's the question she presented me with while working on a Word document the other day: How do I begin numbering pages starting with number 1 on the fourth page instead of on the first page? This is a not-uncommon dilemma, so here's the answer.

The key to having different formatting in different parts of a document is to use sections. To quote Microsoft Office Word Help, you "insert section breaks to divide the document into sections, and then format each section the way you want." To solve my friend's problem, we inserted a section break beginning on the fourth page, then started the automatic page numbering feature in that new section. We severed the links between the headers on the third and fourth pages, and formatted the page number to start with the number 1. We ended up with no page numbers on the first three pages, and page numbers beginning with 1 on the fourth page and following--just what she wanted.

The trick to sections, for me anyway, is understanding the goofy names the delightful programmers at Microsoft assigned to the different type of section breaks. To insert a section, put your cursor where you want the section to begin. From the toolbar, click on Insert, then click on Break. A box will pop up giving you several options. You can insert a page break from this box as well, but we'll ignore that for now. Under Section, you'll see these choices: next page, continuous, odd page, and even page. If those make intuitive sense to you, then you should go write code for Microsoft.

I suppose "next page" is logical enough. If you select "next page," the new section will start on the next page--ta-da!! This would be useful if you have come to the end of a page and know that you want a new type of formatting to begin on, ummm, the next page.

"Continuous" makes no sense to me at all. It should be called "here." When you choose "continuous," a section break is inserted at the spot where your cursor is at that moment. This is what we used in my friend's document, at the top of the fourth page, although "next page" would have worked if we put our cursor at the end of the third page. I suppose they use the word "continuous" because you can stay on the same page without an obvious break and yet still have an invisible section break that separates the formatting. Who knows? Furthermore, who cares?

To quote Microsoft Office Word Help again, "Odd page or Even page inserts a section break and starts the new section on the next odd-numbered or even-numbered page."

Here's one more bit of advice from Microsoft Office Help: "Keep in mind that a section break controls the section formatting of the text that precedes it. For example, if you delete a section break, the preceding text becomes part of the following section and assumes its section formatting."

To my friend Lee, who inspires me daily, and to everyone who struggles with Word on a daily basis--be careful when playing with sections, because you can get burned. But remember that wonderful Undo button and keep on typing.