I'm having some issues with page number I'm hoping someone can help me with.

Using the insert page number, I've put page numbers at the button, centre of
the page including chapter numbers based on heading1, which is numbered A,
B, C... so I get page numbers that look like "A-12" or "C-47". The page
setup has footer margin set to 0.5". At first the page numbers were not
quite centred on the page. After some experimenting I found that the page
number style had inherited the Normal style's attributes of a first line
indent of 0.5" and double spacing so that the frame that holds the page
number in the footer has an extra 0.5" of blank space to the left of the
page number and an extra line's height of blank space below it. Changing the
text's paragraph formatting to single space, no first line indent causes the
frame to collapse to the correct size just large enough to hold the text and
properly centred.

However, when I printed to the file to an PDF and measured the distance from
the page number to the bottom of the page, it was 0.7" rather than 0.5".
This is problematic since the final PDF file will incorporate pages created
in different applications, and I don't want the page numbers jumping around
as you flip through the pages. So I need to be able to control exactly where
the page number will be.

What's really strange, though, is I have another document that has the exact
same margin settings and also a bottom, centred page number. I've checked in
the case of that document the frame size matches the text size for the page
number. However, when it prints the page numbers are 0.5" from the bottom of
the page. Well, around 0.52", actually, but I'm guessing the bottom of the
text is 0.5", whereas the baseline is slightly higher.

If I put the 2 documents at the same zoom level side by side for comparison,
I can see that the one I'm having problems with really does place the page
number higher. Also, when I view the footers, I can see that the footer
frame (the dashed line) is taller for the document with the improper
positioning. Changing the footer margin does change the size of the footer
frame and the position of the page number, but unlike the first document,
the position doesn't match the number entered for the footer margin.

I just don't understand what's going on here...

I've read some suggestions that you just shouldn't use the insert page
number option and instead just use a page number field in the footer
directly. However, I couldn't find the include chapter number option when
inserting a page field. How is this done?

Also, the last part of the document is a list of references. I've used the
header1 style for the title but removed the chapter number. The page numbers
inherited the chapter number (letter) from the previous section. How can I
advance it so it goes to the next letter, or even better, to an arbitrary
letter (like "R-")? I'm also undecided if the number should continue between
chapter letters (i.e. A-24, B-25) which is what it's doing or reset at the
start of each chapter (i.e. A-24, B-1). If I wanted to do the latter, what
would I have to do? Note that I need the displayed page number to match
what's in the table of contents and table of figures...

Thanks for your help!