I should also mention that after this 27 page portion, the page numbers
proceed correctly as page 11, 12, 13, etc...

Josh

In any given section, Format Page Number gives you the choice of "Continue
from previous section" or "Start at." New sections tend to inherit the
setting in the previous section. Once you've restarted numbering at 9 in a
given section, then new sections are likely going to do the same, so you get
a long string of page 9s.

Continuous section breaks complicate the issue because you can't access
Format Page Number for sections in the middle of a page from the Header and
Footer toolbar (since these sections have no header or footer). There are
two possible approaches: you can insert temporary page breaks in order to
access the Header/Footer, or you can use Insert | Page Numbers (with the
insertion point in one of these center sections). In this dialog, you click
the Format Page Number button, change to "Continue from previous section,"
click OK to return to the Page Numbers dialog, and then carefully choose
Close instead of OK so you don't insert another page number.

What I'm curious about those, is these "three-column tables" that appear to
be in three newspaper-style columns. Do you really have three three-column
tables (or portions of a table) abreast? Nothing wrong with that, if that's
what you need, but I'm just wondering if you're confusing the uses of tables
and snaking columns.

BTW, if this is a continuous table (or even if it isn't), it may be possible
to avoid using column breaks. A continuous section break at the end of the
section will balance the columns, if that's all you're shooting for.
Moreover, you can force table rows to the next column by the judicious
application of the "Keep with next" property. If this IS a continuous table,
that has the added advantage that any heading row(s) will be repeated in the
following column because the table isn't split (nor will you have extraneous
empty paragraphs to deal with).