Word 2013 Table of contents - page numbers all change to 2 when print (or print preview)

Anonymous
2015-03-24T07:04:25+00:00

I have a single section document in Word 2013.  The first page is a TOC.  The document is 4 pages

long and has three Level 1 Heading styles through out the document.  The TOC initially appears correct. 

When I go to Print Preview the TOC will revert all page numbers to 2. 

Changing the Options "Update fields before printing" and  "Allow fields containing tracked changes to update before printing" has no effect (before anyone suggests this).

The only solution is to manually update the TOC, save to PDF, and print the PDF.

Anyone can reproduce this problem. Try it....

  1. Start with blank document
  2. Insert a TOC (ignore the error message, we will come back to this)
  3. Go to the end of the document and insert a page break to move to page 2
  4. Now type a heading in Heading 1 style and press enter
  5. type some dummy text (=rand(20) for example)
  6. Continue steps 4 and 5 to insert more headings and dummy text.
  7. Now return to the top (page 1) and update the TOC
  8. So far so good.  Everything working well
  9. Now go to Print Preview (Ctrl+P)
  10. Everything is still good
  11. Escape back to the document
  12. Go to Print Preview again
  13. AGGGHHHH! All the page numbers have reverted to page 2
  14. Happens every time without fail.  Totally reproducible on all our office PCs.

I have seen many descriptions of this behavior on different forums and not one solution. But I am like the proverbial dog with a bone - I will not let this issue go until MS gives me a solution !

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-03-30T00:58:17+00:00

    Sorry Stefan - I was not locking the field correctly.  You are correct and it is a good work around until MS fix the problem.  I am marking your post as useful, but won't mark as an answer, because your excellent suggestion is a workaround rather than a fix.  Hope that's OK.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-03-30T07:47:27+00:00

    Thanks for your time Doug.  I can now confirm that this issue occurs for Windows 7 and 8 so seems to be independent of OS used.  Microsoft has now confirmed the issue.

    I would be interested to know why you do not experience the issue.  What is different about your environment?  It may help us solve the cause of the problem.

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  4. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-03-30T08:43:52+00:00

    Have just gone through the process again to confirm that there is no problem here when using Office Professional Plus 2013 (15.0.4701.1001) MSO (15.0.4701.1000) 32-bit on a Samsung Slate running Windows 7 64-bit.

    It doesn't matter how many times I use Print Preview\return to the document.

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  5. Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-03-30T13:48:44+00:00

    Thanks for the feedback.

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