Troubleshooting
Misplaced page numbers
How you'd notice this
Page numbers appear on the wrong side of the page (e.g. always bottom-left instead of alternating with facing pages), show up on pages that shouldn't have them (title page, copyright page), or the numbering sequence restarts oddly or skips.
Why it happens
Bound books traditionally alternate page number position between left (even) and right (odd) pages, and front matter is usually unnumbered or uses roman numerals separately from the body. This requires either a program with facing-page awareness built in, or manually splitting the document into sections with different header/footer settings, skipping that step is the most common cause of numbers landing in the wrong place.
How to fix it
You haven't picked a formatting program yet, so every program's steps are shown below, pick a tab for the one you're using.
- Turn on "Different Odd & Even Pages" (double-click a footer to open Header & Footer Tools > Design tab) so left/right pages can each get correctly positioned numbers.
- To suppress numbers on front matter, insert a Next Page section break (Layout > Breaks > Next Page) right before your numbered content starts, then in that new section's footer click "Link to Previous" to unlink it before turning numbering on there.
- Use Insert > Page Number > Format Page Numbers to set front matter to lowercase roman numerals and restart the body at Arabic "1."
- Insert a section break (Insert > Break > Section break (next page)) before your numbered content, then use the header/footer Options button to set "different header/footer" for that section and turn numbering on only there.
- Docs doesn't support alternating odd/even header position, if that specifically is what looks wrong, that's a known Docs limitation; consider Word or Atticus for this piece.
- Toggle Page Numbers on in the Formatting panel and pick position. Atticus automatically excludes numbers from anything marked as a Front Matter page type, so if numbers are showing where they shouldn't, check that the page is actually marked Front Matter in the outline.
- Add a page-number text frame with Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number to each Master Page so it auto-positions per master.
- Use Layout > Numbering & Section Options to start a new numbered section (with its own numbering style) right after front matter, and apply the "None" master to any page that should show no number at all.
- Scrivener isn't built to fix this, compile to Word (.docx) and follow Word's fix above, or move the manuscript to Atticus, which handles page-number placement and front-matter exclusion automatically.
- Confirm you inserted a section break (Insert > Section Break) before your numbered content starts, page numbers apply per-section in Pages, without a section boundary they apply uniformly to the whole document.
- Pages has no alternating odd/even header position, if that specifically is what looks wrong, that's a known Pages limitation, export to Word or move to Atticus for this piece.
- Reedsy Studio places and excludes page numbers automatically based on your book's structure, if numbers are showing where they shouldn't, check that the page is actually marked as a front-matter element type in the outline, not a regular chapter entry.
- Vellum places and excludes page numbers automatically once your trim size is set, if numbers are showing where they shouldn't, check that the page was added using Vellum's dedicated front-matter element type (Title Page, Copyright Page), not a regular chapter entry.
- Confirm you've set up a separate Page Style with no footer for front matter and used Insert > More Breaks > Insert Page Break (with a style change and "Change page number") right where numbering should start.
- Check Format > Page Style, Header/Footer tabs, and confirm "Same content on left and right pages" is unchecked if you need alternating number position.