Hi all,

I am putting the thesis together. With the Masters thesis I just printed out the individual chapters, but now my Uni requires an e-copy in a single PDF file.
I want to use roman numeral to number the first pages -e.g. table of content, abstract, etc. and then change to Arabic from the introduction, but every time that I paste the files in the new document vista automatically renumber the whole document either in Roman or Arabic numerals.

Also, I would like the footnotes numbers to re-start from 1 at every chapter, but again, it automatically renumber them whatever I select.

Is there any magic wizard that can help me with these? Help!!!

Thank you!

======= Date Modified 08 Apr 2011 19:41:38 =======
Hi Corinne

I'm a few months behind you; how I wish I was at your stage!

I know how to do it in Word XP but I find Vista difficult. With Word XP you have to insert section/page breaks. Click the insert menu and then select breaks. Then you manually insert the page breaks where you want them. You can only physically see them in 'normal view' which looks awful but at least you can see they are there. The actual breaks are not there on the screen in 'print view' although they are there. I had to do this for my masters pdf thesis - it took a bit of playing around but I got there in the end. Once the breaks are inserted you should then be able to number your intro bit with Roman numerals and the rest normally. The same for your footnotes.

It must be a similar process in Vista. Hope you get somebody more technically advanced than me, but at least it might start you off!

Hi

I usually find the guides on youtube are brilliant for this sort of thing. Not sure if this one is exactly what you want but it seems to be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIfacBJZba0

Zak

the easiest way for you in this situation (although I would have written the thesis in one big file... seen a few ppl do this. always wondered why...)

either get Acrobat or FreePDF and digitally "print" those files to separate pdfs and then combine them to one big pdf.

If you need help with that, just give us a shout ;)

Hello and thanks a lot everyone! I didn't know that you can upload several files in a single PDF document. One of my friends has Acrobat create PDF, so I should be able to practice with it later on this afternoon. I had tried everything else before, but nothing seemed to work. I will let you know the result of my trial session.

Thank you Ady, you are very close to finishing too. Time passes very quickly when you are close to completion. This formatting problem is just very frustrating. I am sure that it would take 10 minutes to sort things like the table of content out, but it takes forever to me! I attended workshops at my Uni, but they were all for Office 2003 or 2007, not for vista, and if you do not use these things every day, you are unlikely to become skilled anyway...

Hi Corinne,

I went through this about a month ago, so I might be of help (at least, if you're working in Word).

-Have you checked Office online help? Very helpful for most of your questions.
-Footnotes to start from 1 at each chapter: put each chapter in a different SECTION (see following bit on section breaks). On the References tab, click Footnotes&Endnotes dialogue box. In the Start at box, click 1. In the numbering box, click restart each section. Click apply.
-Using section breaks (splits the document up in various sections): Inserting the section break for each chapter: Place the cursor in a blank line before you want your chapter to start (i.e. after the table of contents). From the Page Layout tab, Page Steup group, click on Next Page (the new chapter will begin on the next page).
You also need these section breaks if you want to change between numerals. You'll then need to "break" the link between the header/footer that will contain the Roman numeral and the Arabic numerals: Make sure you've got the curser placed in the footer/header from where you want to change numerals. Check that the header/footer does njot say "same as previous" on the right of the footer area. Click on the Pager number button, and choose Format Page numbers. Change numerals. If necessary change the page numbering to start at 1.
-If you're working in Word and are putting all different chapters/files in one big file, you can then save the whole "final" file as a PDF by going to Save as, and select PDF.

Does that help?
Livvie

Hi Livvie, thank you for this. I did try all you have said, but the result is always the same. Perhaps is just me - I am completely hopeless with this vista thing!

However, just in case there are other people around with the same problem I found out that Adobe acrobat x pro allows you to up-load and combine all your word docs in one single PDF file. However, even the student edition is not cheap. But I discovered that you can do the same using Expert PDF 7. It comes at a fraction of the price and you can up-load as many docs as you need, so I made a quick trip to PC world this morning and I have already tried a mock final PDF version of my thesis!

I would have never got there without your suggestions anyway, so thank once again! 

glad this worked out ;)