When asterisks attack in the page numbering window

We have created a 10-page PO using Smart Forms. The page numbering window behaves rather oddly. Instead of showing:
Page 1 of 10,
Page 2 of 10,
. . .
Page 9 of 10,
Page 10 of 10

it shows:
Page 1 of *,
Page 2 of *,
. . .
Page 9 of *,
Page 10 of 10

Have you encountered this same kind of problem before?

Yes, I have. This problem can pop up in both SAPscript and Smart Forms. When there is not enough room to output all in the information in a form field, SAP replaces the first character with an asterisk. For these particular fields, the system appears to have reserved only one character – hence, the '*'.

In the present case, the solution is to override the default output length for the total pages field. In Smart Forms one way to do so is to change the field to read: &SFSY-FORMPAGES(3ZC)&. In SAPscript, the corresponding change would be: &SAPSCRIPT-FORMPAGES(3ZC)&.

The information inside the parentheses represents formatting options, as follows:

3 = output length of data
Z = suppress leading zeroes
C = compress blank spaces

For further details and related notes see Note 588352 in the SAP Service Marketplace (http://service.sap.com).