Exceeded maximum number of pages on Word

Anonymous
2019-12-10T03:29:26+00:00

Just today I began receiving an error message that states "You have exceeded the maximum number of pages supported by Word or this document may be damaged..."

Opening up a tried and true file that's been in use for the last 3 months...including just fine not 3 days ago (no updates to the file, nor a related template version from which the new file was constructed) Latest version of Office 365.

Symptoms beyond the error is that the file will not display in print view. File will not save. Will not print. Will not export.

Verified on multiple Win10 machines with latest updates and patches (as of this post). Tried it on an older computer that hasn't been used or updated since September. File works fine.

Saw older posts reference this issue, but nothing since 2014. Tried all those troubleshooting steps, so please don't reply with a link to a clearly outdated KB article.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2019-12-20T07:21:55+00:00

Hi All,

Thanks for all your effort in this thread.

As this thread has multiple replies, to help the user who having the same issue, I would like to make a quick summary on this issue:

Issue symptom:

After updating your Office to the version 1911, when using Word to work on the document with multiple pages, you might receive the error: "You have exceeded the maximum number of pages supported by MS Word."

 

Issue environment:

Office 365 Business Version 1911 (Build 12228.20364 Click to Run) Monthly Channel

Office 2016 Professional Plus 1911 (Build 1228.20364 Click to Run) Monthly Channel

Solution:

Thanks for Matt's confirmation, this issue seems to be resolved after he updating his Office application to the Monthly Targeted Channel version 1912 Build 12325.20172. As this is an insider update channel, we do not suggest updating into this channel as it has certain risks.

However, since the fix has been deployed in the insider channel, this means it will be roll out to the Monthly users in the future updates, please wait patiently. Thanks for your understanding.

Note: Join the insider channel require you to be an Office 365 subscriber, so if you are using Office 2016 Professional Plus(which is an One-Time purchase product), you won't be able to join the insider channel at this time. 

Workaround:

As Renato mentioned, he was benefit from the this thread. Although this is a Mac thread, but the method could be also applied to the Windows side. Here is the workaround:

1.Open the issued document, wait until the error prompt "You have exceeded the maximum number of pages.. " prompt out.

2.Leave the error prompt alone, create a new blank document.

3.Copy the content in the issued document and paste it to the blank document we just created.

4.Save&Close the new document. And open it again, check if the issue still persist.

Again, we greatly appreciate for all your effort in this thread.

Regards,

Alex Chen

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  1. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2020-03-05T00:09:43+00:00

    While the problem probably should not occur, where it does occur it almost certainly results from the misuse of  Continuous Section Breaks and Page Breaks, where a single Next Page Section Break should have been used, or the use of an irrational number of Section Breaks.

    In all of the cases of documents that have been sent to me with the problem, I have been able to overcome by rationalising the use of Section Breaks.

    If you need assistance with your document, send it to me, referring to this thread in the covering email message and I will help you with it.

    If the document is too large to attach to and email message, upload a copy of it to the following folder of my OneDrive

    https://1drv.ms/f/s!AmuIXmFDy-1a8nP3RpgnYHp-5zXK

    and send me an email to the address shown in my signature to let me know that it is there.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-12-19T16:37:22+00:00

    Alex,

    Whenever I ran Windows Update (or the update within an Office app) it would say that I am up-to-date.

    I instead signed up for the Windows Insider build and applied the 1912 12325.20172 build which seemed to resolve the issue.

    Matt

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-12-14T18:29:59+00:00

    There is no specified upper page limit in Word.

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/word/operating-parameter-limitation

    .

    Word doesn't really track page numbers. In Word, "pages" are an artificial construct based on the printer driver limits.

    .

    Most commonly, when you see this error the problem is document corruption so word is counting each word or letter as a "page".

    .

    Sometimes "supermen" like Doug R can dig into the underlying XML structure of the file to fix bad XML code created by Word. Or in a worst case, he can sometimes recover part of the document.

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  4. Charles Kenyon 170.9K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2019-12-10T04:36:00+00:00

    I don't really know of a maximum number of pages. How many pages do you have? What is the file size?

    Most of those KB articles are not outdated, they simply haven't been updated to include the new versions of the software.

    Let people make suggestions. If you don't want them to suggest something you've tried, list everything that you've tried and we'll try not to tell you to try it again.

    This is a user to user support forum, primarily staffed by volunteers with a fair amount of experience with Word. Pay special attention to suggestions from those with the 'badge" of MVP. They all know what they are talking about, usually much more than the paid support staff.

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