Merging Documents with Different Page Numbers

A lot of students have divided up their dissertation into different parts and saved it in multiple Word files: for example, they save the Table of Contents with the Roman numerals as one file, and the body of the dissertation with the Arabic numerals as another file. Word does not make it easy to merge these two documents without overwriting the page numbers. Here are some instructions to help. If you're still having trouble, email .

  1. First you're going to create a "Break" between the first part of your document with the Roman numerals and the second part of your document with the Arabic numerals.
    • Open up the first part of your dissertation in Word. This should be the beginning that has the Roman numerals.
    • Position your curser on the last page.
    • Click on "Page Layout" in the top blue bar.
    • Click on "Breaks."
    • Click on "next page" under "Section Breaks."
    • You'll see a new page appear with a Roman numeral at the top. That's ok. You're going to change that.
  2. Now you're going to tell the document that you want the pages in the second section to be Arabic numerals starting with the number 1.
    • Click on the top of the new page.
    • Click on "Insert" in the top blue bar.
    • Click on "Page Number."
    • Click on "Format Page Number" and change the "Number format" to be Arabic numerals (1,2,3). Don't hit ok yet. If you want this section to start with number 1, Click on "Start at" and change the number in the box to 1. Now click Ok.
    • You should now see that the first part of your dissertation has Roman numerals and the second part starts with the Arabic letter 1.
  3. Now you're going to incorporate the rest of your dissertation into this document starting on the page with the Arabic number 1.
    • You can cut and paste (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V) or you can:
    • Go to "Insert" in the top blue bar.
    • Click on "Object" (over to the right).
    • Select "Text from File."
    • Select the main body of your dissertation and click "Insert."
    • That should incorporate the new text starting at the page with the Roman numeral 1.
  4. Double-check all of the pages. Save your document with a new file name as a Word document in case you need to make future changes. Then save it as a pdf (File/Save As/Adobe PDF).

Please email if you have any problems or suggestions on how to improve these instructions. Thanks!