Manually changing footers

Question

I have a document that needs footers edited. It needs to be page numbered. I need the first two pages to NOT show a footer, yet the third page to have the footer reflect page 3, and so on from there. I can't seem to find anything besides removing the footer on the first page.

Answer 1

Adapting this answer to How can I have different text in the footer on every page of a Word document?:

• Edit the footer.

• Copy the following text:

   IF PAGE > 2 "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
  

  into the footer.  Replace the “lazy dog” sentence with the text that you want to include starting on page 3.  It can be multiple lines.  If you want it to include the dynamic page number, type the word PAGE, then select it and press Ctrl+F9.  This will convert the word PAGE into a page number field, which will temporarily add { and } to the display, resulting in something like this: { PAGE }

  (I don’t know what to do if your footer contains literal quote characters, or non-text elements like images.)

• Select the word PAGE (at the beginning) and press Ctrl+F9.

• Select the entire phrase and press Ctrl+F9.  This will convert those strings to fields, and, consequently, add (more) { and } characters, resulting in something like this:

  { IF { PAGE } > 2 "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." }
  

• Right-click on the IF and select “Toggle Field Codes”.
• If there’s anything that you want in the footer on every page, add it now.
• Close the footer.

Explanation

^{(In case any is needed)}

Basically, this is Microsoft Word’s implementation of the IF-THEN-ELSE construct that is common in programming languages, as in

IF  Todays’s date is 1
THEN
    Today is Monday
ELSE IF  Todays’s date is 2
THEN
    Today is Tuesday
ELSE IF  Todays’s date is 3
THEN
    Today is Wednesday
ELSE
    Here comes the weekend!
END IF

Generally, they can all be nested (as shown in this answer).