Atrium Institutional Repository

These tutorials were developed to provide step-by-step instructions to assist graduate students with using the built in tools in MS Word to create a thesis page numbering system that meets the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies’ (OGPS) thesis page numbering requirements.

The guide assumes you are starting with a MS Word document that does not have any page numbering applied. If you are working with a preformatted Word document such as the ETD monograph or manuscript templates, you can use these instructions to help you edit your page numbering to meet OGPS’ general page formatting requirements as required.

Please note that the word ‘thesis’ is used to refer to both a masters thesis and a doctoral dissertation. Additionally, this guide only focusses on one aspect of the thesis formatting requirements; please refer to the OGPS’ Thesis Completion guide for detailed information about formatting requirements.

Note: Graduate students commonly request support for thesis page numbering, however, neither the OGPS nor the library are able to provide one-on-one thesis formatting support.

The OGPS has general format requirements for theses to ensure a consistent and professional look to theses created at the U of G. The design and format of your thesis should reflect the hard work you, the graduate student, has put into writing it. 

When reviewing theses submitted for inclusion in the Atrium, the OGPS sees the following common page numbering errors made by students. These errors will result in the OGPS having to reject the thesis submission for correction and resubmission: 

• Using the incorrect page numbering system in the front, body and back matter of the thesis. 
• Forgetting to suppress the page number from displaying on the title page and abstract page(s). 

Your thesis must have: 

• All front matter (i.e., everything from the title page to the list of appendices) pages numbered using consecutive Roman numerals (e.g., iii, iv, v, etc.). 
• All body and back matter (e.g., research chapters, bibliography, appendices) pages numbered using consecutive Arabic numbers (e.g., 1, 2, 3, etc.) with the first page of the body text starting at page number “1”. 
• Page numbers located in the header or footer of the page. 

To do this, make use of the insert page number functionality in MS Word. This tool allows you to select a numbering system (i.e., Roman numerals) and the location on the page where the numbers will be displayed.

These tutorials have been created and tested with accessibility in mind and meets WCAG 2.2 AA compliance. To optimize the user experience, we do recommend that you access the interactive portions of the tutorial on larger resolution screens, such as a laptop or desktop monitor. Please contact the library if you encounter any barriers.

PC

These tutorials were created using Microsoft Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021, Word Version 2108. 

Mac

These tutorials were created using Microsoft Word for Mac (version 16.88).