I did come up with a workaround... to make the various section breaks
Even breaks. There is some compromise with what it seems to do to page
numbering, but at least I can get the right number of pages in my doc.

In article , Kevin
wrote:

First of all, I've been through the blankpage (or whatever it was
called) FAQ.

The behavior I'm seeing acts like one of my section breaks decides to
become an odd page rather than next page break. The document is
intended to be 20 pages. I can be sitting with 19, and need to insert
one more. Somewhere I'll force a new page, either by a section break
(next), page break, or just adding blank lines -- doesn't matter. When
that happens the page count jumps to 21.

There will be a section break (next) elsewhere in the doc where it will
jump two pages. If I look via Print view, I can see there is only 20 at
this point. If I look via Normal view I see a single Next page section
break. If I look via Print Preview, I see the blank page where the jump
is.

If I go to Page Setup from a spot after the jump, it shows the section
start as Next page. One interesting note is that if I change that to
Continuous, nothing happens -- it stays a Next page break.

The whole doc is currently letter sized pages, portrait orientation. I
need to section breaks to manage headers/footers & page numbering the
way I want. fwiw, there are embedded links to Excel and Visio diagrams
in the doc.

Thanks,
Kevin