Option
Last updated on
Jun 2, 2026
Learn how page and chapter numbering, sections, and formatting options work together in Adobe InDesign to manage numbering across your document or book.
Use these options to set up page, section, and chapter numbering for your document, including different numbering styles for sections, such as Roman numerals for the front matter and Arabic numerals for the main content. Page numbering also affects layout, determining whether pages appear as right‑hand (recto) or left‑hand (verso) pages, and supports very large documents.
To access document numbering options, select a document page (not a parent page) and choose Layout > Numbering & Section Options.
Page numbering options
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Description |
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Automatic Page Numbering |
Continues page numbering from the previous section and updates numbers automatically when pages are added or removed earlier in the document. |
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Start Page Numbering at |
Sets the starting page number for the document or section and renumbers the remaining pages in that section accordingly. Enter an Arabic numeral even when using non-Arabic numbering styles. |
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Style |
Specifies the page-numbering format applied only to pages in the current section. |
Section options
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Option |
Description |
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Section Prefix |
Defines a short label, up to eight characters, that appears before page numbers and can include punctuation or fixed-width spaces inserted using white space characters but not plus (+) or comma (,). |
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Section Marker |
Defines the text that appears wherever a section marker character is placed in the document. |
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Include Prefix When Numbering Pages |
Determines whether the section prefix is included when printing pages or generating tables of contents and indexes, or shown only within the document. |
Document chapter numbering options
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Option |
Description |
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Style |
Defines the chapter-numbering format used consistently throughout the document. |
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Automatic Chapter Numbering |
Applies sequential chapter numbers across documents in a book. |
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Start Chapter Numbering at |
Sets the starting chapter number when chapters should not follow the book’s existing sequence. |
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Same As Previous Document in the Book |
Uses the same chapter number as the previous document when the current document continues the same chapter. |
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