With some popular inkjet printers, when you insert page numbers in a footer using Word's Insert-Page Numbers command, only part of the number prints. That's because the printer can print no closer than 1.68 cm (0.66 inches) from the bottom of the page, while Word prints footers at just 1.27 cm (0.5 inches) from the bottom by default.

Caption: Reset Header or Footer measurements to recover "invisible" page numbers

To change that default in all Word versions (from 6 to 2000), select File-Page Setup. In the 'From edge' box of the Page Setup dialogue box, click the up arrow on the Footer measurement and change it to read 1.8 cm (0.7 inches). Click Default, then Yes in the confirmation dialogue box to apply the change to all Word documents.