# Word 2003 change page order



## gg_texas (Feb 12, 2010)

I have a Word document with seven pages. Before saving as a pdf and printing I want to rearrange the order of the pages. How is this easily accomplished? I've spent the last hour or so reading all the Word help files I can find, but to no avail. Word has become so bloated and non-intuitive that it should be scrapped altogether. Simplicity is better!


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## macropod (Apr 11, 2008)

Hi gg,

This really is rather simple - in the print dialogue box, insert the page #s in the order in which you want them printed. Isn't it wonderful that MS has made it so easy for you ...


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## gg_texas (Feb 12, 2010)

But my basic problem remains the same. If I create a 7 page Word document and want to change the order of the pages before I save it, how do I rearrange the pages to my liking? E.g. if I forward the Word doc to someone obviously I want it to open in proper page order. PowerPoint allows a slide view of all the slides I've created, which I can then easily move around to my heart's content until I get them placed in the order I prefer. It's also easy to rearrange page order in Publisher. I am trying to find something similar within Word. Hence, my frustration.


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## Zazula (Apr 27, 2006)

The obvious way to do it is by cutting and pasting in Word. You can do that while in Print Preview mode (press on the Magnifier button to de-select it), in order to be able to see on the fly any changes you make. Before saving, if you have page numbers that need to be updated, select the respective footers or headers and press F9 to update the field(s).


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## macropod (Apr 11, 2008)

Hi gg,

The main obstacle you have to re-arranging pages is that Word is not a page layout prograam - it's a word-processor that uses both the page settings and the current printer driver to work out the document's layout. The PowerPoint analogy is not a good one, since PowerPoint is a slide layout program; it doesn't, for example, automatically push overflowing text from one slide to the next.

If you're going to re-arrange the page order within the file, you have to tell Word what to do about paragraphs that span the current page breaks, Section breaks, footers, header, page numbers, footnotes, endnotes and so on. There's simply no way Word could be expected to know what your intentions might be with all these variables. Printing to PDF, inserting the desired page order into the print dialogue box circumvents all those issues.

I do have to wonder, though, why you would have created the document with a page order that differs from the final requirements.


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## gg_texas (Feb 12, 2010)

The pages themselves are self-contained items, it's not like a running narrative as a typical document would be. Mostly just tables and small charts that stand alone on each page. After getting towards the end I decided to add additional information to the project, which necessitates a change in the logical order of each page so it will read coherently. It only took me 15 minutes to put it together in Word, not knowing it would take another day to figure out I can't simply just rearrange the order of the pages. No biggie. I use all the other Office programs regularly for various projects, but I detest the bloated and convoluted Word. Anyway, thanks to all for the assistance. Next time I will know.


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## Zazula (Apr 27, 2006)

It's indeed no biggie, gg_texas; I myself have to re-arrange the page sequence in Word at times. In these cases of self-contained pages, they are typically separated by page breaks (or even section breaks, if page-numbering formatting dictates so). And I use the 'method' I told you about earlier, with no problems.


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