How to Add Roman Numeral Page Numbers to Word

Last updated on January 16th, 2023 at 10:04 pm

When you add page numbers to the header or footer in Microsoft Word, then the numbering that is used is likely the standard English numeral system. Use these steps to add Roman numeral page numbers to Word documents.

How to Use Roman Numeral Page Numbers in Microsoft Word

1. Open your document in Word.
2. Select the Insert tab at the top of the window.
3. Click the Page Numbers button and choose the location for the page numbers.
4. Click the Page Numbers button again and choose Format Page Numbers.
5. Click the Number format dropdown and choose a Roman Numeral option.
6. Click the OK button.

Our article continues below with additional information on how to add roman numeral page numbers in Word, including pictures of these steps.

Adding page numbers to a document in Microsoft Word is a fairly common requirement for documents created for school or work.

While the default page numbering options may be familiar, they can get a little tricky when you need to do something different or unfamiliar.

For example, certain formatting standards ask you to use roman numeral formatting instead of the default option. You may think that this is something that you need to do manually, but Word actually offers roman numerals as a page numbering option.

Our guide below will show you how to use roman numeral page numbering in Microsoft Word.

How to Number Pages with Roman Numerals in Microsoft Word (Guide with Pictures)

The steps in this article were performed in the Microsoft Word for Office 365 version of the application.

Step 1: Open your document in Microsoft Word.

Step 2: Select the Insert tab at the top of the window.

Step 3: Click the Page Numbers button and choose the desired location for the page numbers.

These page numbers are going to be standard English numerals, but we will change that in a second.

Step 4: Click the Page Numbers button and choose the Format Page Numbers option.

Step 5: Click the Number format dropdown menu and choose your preferred roman numeral style.

Step 6: Click the OK button when you’re done. Your page numbers should now be Roman numerals.

Once you have completed the steps in this article for how to add Roman numeral page numbers to Word you can go even further with your page number setup with the other options that we discuss further in this guide.

Our tutorial continues below with additional discussion about how to adjust the page number format in a Word document.

More Information on How to Insert Page Number with Roman Numeral Numbering Style

Once you have your page numbers added to your document there are a bunch of other ways that you can customize them after they’ve been added to the header/footer sections.

In the Page Number Format dialog box there is a Number format drop down menu at the top of the window, where you selected the roman numeral option in the steps above.

You will notice that there are a bunch of other options there, too, like lower case roman numerals, lowercase letters, uppercase letters, other languages, and more.

There is also a Page numbering section at the bottom of this window where you can select the “Continue from previous section” option or the “Start at” option.

Word will automatically consider a move to the next page as the “next section” so you don’t need to make any adjustments there if you want to number like that. If you want to skip the first page of your document in your numbering, such as if you have a title page, then you could elect to have a different firs tpage in the header, then choose to start the page numbering at a different number.

However, if you would like to create your own section breaks then you can do so from the Layout tab at the top of the window.

There you will see a Page Setup group, with buttons for Margins, Orientation, Columns, Line Numbers, Hyphenation, and Breaks.

Clicking the Breaks button will expand that menu where you can add a section break, a page break, and more.

You can make adjustments to the header or footer’s style by clicking the Header & Footer tab at the top of the window after you have added information to that location. there you will find even more options for modifying the information that is in the header or footer and repeating on each page.