How to hide page numbering on the first page of a MS Word document

You may not want to have page numbers appear on the first page of your document, particularly if it is a cover or summary page.

Click on the Insert tab of the ribbon, and choose Page Number - my preference is to then select Bottom of Page, but you may place the page number as you prefer - next, scroll through the list and select the style of page number you would like to use.

Once you have made your selection, you will enter "Header & Footer mode".   You will notice a few things:

- Your document text will appear greyed out
- Your cursor will appear in a demarcated area with a grey tag on the left titled Footer
- There will be an additional ribbon tab (highlighted in green) and titled Header & Footer Tools

On the Header & Footer Tools Design ribbon tab, click the check box for Different First Page.

The footer area at the bottom of the first page will now be titled First Page Footer and the page number will automatically be removed.

At this point you could add a different piece of text to appear as the first page footer, alternately live it blank. Once you have completed customisation of the footer space, you should exit and return to working in the document as normal by either clicking the Close Header and Footer button on the Design tab, or even quicker, double click anywhere on the document outside the demarcated footer area.

Do you have any other Header & Footer related questions?  Let me know by adding a comment and I'll create a post especially for you.

Forward multiple emails to single recipient

Sometimes you need to forward many emails to another person.   Mostly people tend to do this one by one, which can be time consuming for the sender, and possibly annoying for the recipient who is suddenly faced with an ever increasing number of unread messages in their mailbox (and that's not even considering the delights of extra beeps on the mobile phone)  Fortunately there is a better way!

Open Outlook.  Select the first message you would like to forward.  Hold the CTRL key and select each subsequent message you would like to forward.

On the Home tab, click the Forward button.

A new email message window will appear, and each of the selected email messages are added to it as attachments.    You can now continue to address and send your email as normal.

Problem solved.  One physical email forwarded, and it contains all the other related items attached within it.

Useful? Anything else you'd like to learn about?  Let me know, or share this by using the links below.

Adding captions in MS Word

If you are writing a long MS Word document containing a lot of images, tables or other graphical items, it is preferable, and sometimes required, to add captions to those items in order to be able to easily reference them by their number in the text as well as generate a Table of Figures.

To add a caption, select the item to be captioned in your document and click the References tab.  In the Captions section, click Insert Caption.  (You could also right click over the item and choose Insert Caption from the menu.)

The Caption dialog box will appear with selections to make for the captioning style you would like to use.

The first field in the dialog box (titled Caption:) displays what the caption would look like if you inserted it at this point.  Beneath this are the options you may choose from.  The Label you want should ideally denote the type of item you are captioning.  For example, if you have inserted a Table, then choose the Table label.  Once you have decided on the label you would like to use, then decided on where the caption should appear in relation to the item (Above selected item or Below selected item). 

By default, captions will be numbered sequentially, if you prefer another style, click the Numbering... button to make your selection.  To change the numbering on the caption, click Numbering and make your selection from the formats available, then click OK

Remember to check the caption preview (which appears as the first field in the Caption dialog box) and once you are satisfied with your selections, click OK to insert. 

Happy captioning!