How to put "1 of ..." page numbers on a LaTeX letter

Someone e-mailed me recently to ask how to add "1 of LAST_PAGE" page numbers to a LaTeX letter document. I generated the sample LaTeX document fancy_letter_numbering.tex to show how it's done using the fancyhdr and lastpage packages.

Here is my response, which gives more details:

I have attached a sample letter with "1 of ..." page numbering throughout. fancyhdr works with "letter" just as well as it works with "article." You just have to treat "\opening" just like you do "\maketitle."

In particular, put this up in your preamble:

\usepackage{lastpage}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\fancyhead{}
\fancyfoot{}
\cfoot{\thepage{}~of~\pageref{LastPage}}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}

Then, after each "\opening" (in the case of a single letter, there will only be one), put the line:

\thispagestyle{fancy}

Otherwise you will get page numbers on every page except for the first one.

Of course, you will have to run LaTeX (or PDFLaTeX) at least twice to place the "LastPage" label properly and generate the correct page refeference.

[ Additionally, you may further customize the headings and footers making use of all of the nice features that come with the fancyhdr package. ]