A header or footer is the text that is printed at the top or bottom of every page in a document.
HEADERS AND FOOTERS
A header or footer is the text that is printed at the top or bottom of every page in a document. As you can probably guess, a header is printed in the top margin and a footer is printed in the bottom margin. You can see them in most books with the title at the top and page number at the bottom.
Headers and footers are usually made up of simple fields such as the document title and a page number, but can be made to contain large amounts of text and graphics.
Some examples of headers and footers are:
C:docsgirlfriendChoreoanimator.doc Page 5
Created by: Jeremy Goodwin Page 3 of 45
Created on: October 6, 1998 Page 1 Confidential
Placing information in the header or footer is usually so you can tell which pages logically belong together when printed out (the much-maligned “dead-tree format”). Having the file name and location can be handy too.
CREATE A SIMPLE HEADER AND FOOTER
Creating a header or footer inside your Word document is done by selecting “Header and Footer” from the “View” menu. Word will then display the header area of the document by default. The main contents of your page will now appear “dimmed”, while the header area will be activated for editing and is outlined by non-printing dotted lines.
Start out by entering some text into the header and then formatting it in the same way you would the main document. Headers and footers allow for 3 spaced elements on the same line: one aligned left; one aligned center; and one aligned right. To move between the left, middle and right aligned areas on a header or footer, simply hit the “TAB” button on the keyboard.
A commonly used example of this spacing occurs when placing the author name on the left, the page number in the middle and the date on the right of the footer in the document (which is one of the pre-set AutoText options).
A general rule of thumb is to try and make the header and footer less noticeable than the main body of text. To do this, try changing the text color from black to gray, or make the font-size smaller.
After editing the header, you can edit the footer by scrolling down the page and selecting it manually, or you can be lazy and click the “Switch Between Header and Footer” button from the “Header and Footer” floating toolbar.
Anything you enter in the header or footer will appear on every page of the current document. Also if the header or footer is too large to fit in the margin, Word adjusts the top and bottom margin to accommodate them.
If you wish to return to the main part of the document after editing a header or footer, click “Close” on the “Header and Footer” toolbar, or simply double-click in the main text area of the document. In print layout view, the headers and footers are visible but appear dimmed.
To make a change to or delete the contents from an existing header or footer, double-click the dimmed header or footer area and edit as before.
THE TOOLBAR AND THE AUTOTEXT FUNCTION
The “Header and Footer” toolbar will appear every time you have selected a header or footer to edit. The “Include AutoText” button is given prime-place on the toolbar because it provides a number of very useful pre-set and pre-formatted fields.
Most headers and footers that you see on Word documents will in fact use one of these handy AutoText selections:
- – PAGE –
- Author, Page #, Date
- Confidential, Page #, Date
- Created by
- Created on
- Filename
- Filename and path
- Last printed
- Last saved by
- Page X of Y
Next to the “Insert AutoText” button are a number of separate fields such as page number, total number of pages, date and time. All of these fields (as well as the ones in the AutoText selections) change according to context. For example the “page number” field will give a different number on each page; the “number of pages” field will change as soon as the total number of pages in the document changes; and the date and time fields will display the date and time the document was opened, or the field added.
MORE CONTROL USING PAGE SETUP
So far we’ve seen that changing a header or footer in a document propagates those changes to all of the headers or footers in the document.
But clicking the “Page Setup” button on the toolbar (or simply navigating to “File | Page Setup” and clicking on the “Layout” tab) will give you a number of other options.
For example, different headers or footers can be specified for odd and even pages in a document or section within a document by clicking the “Different odd and even” checkbox. This could be particularly useful in a book manuscript where the header on the left-hand page has the title of the book, and the header on the right-hand page has the title of the current chapter.
A different header and footer can also be specified for the first page of a document, or the first page of a section within the document. For example, if the first page of your document is a cover page and does not require a header or footer, you can select the “Different first page” checkbox and then leave the header and footer blank.
DIFFERENT HEADERS AND FOOTERS FOR DIFFERENT SECTIONS
When you divide a document into sections, Word uses the headers and footers in the first section as the default for every subsequent section. All headers in the document and all footers in the document are initially connected so that their contents are identical.
If you want to create a different header or footer in one section, you must break the connection with the preceding header or footer by deselecting the “Link to Previous” button on the “Header and Footer” toolbar. Word then uses the header or footer you create in the current section for all subsequent sections. To create a different header or footer in the following sections, simply go down to that section and repeat the process.
To reconnect a header or footer with the preceding header or footer, simply select the “Link to Previous” button on the “Header and Footer” toolbar for the header or footer you wish to reconnect. When Word asks you to confirm that you want to delete the current header or footer and connect to the preceding header or footer, click “Yes”. The preceding header or footer is repeated in the current section.
CREATING SECTIONS
If the “Link to Previous” button was “grayed out” when you tried to break the connection with the preceding header or footer, it is probably because you haven’t broken your document up into what Word considers to be “sections”.
A “section break” is an invisible mark you insert to show the end of a section. A section break stores the section formatting elements, such as the margins, page orientation, headers and footers, and sequence of page numbers. This helps to divide the document into logical parts and allows you to format each part separately from the others.
A number of section breaks can be accessed via the “Insert | Break” menu:
- “Next page” inserts a section break and starts the new section on the next page (this works like the page-break function).
- “Continuous” inserts a section break and starts the new section on the same page (this is like an invisible section marker).
- “Odd page” or “Even page” inserts a section break and starts the new section on the next odd-numbered or even-numbered page.
When you decide on the most suitable section marker for your needs, you will then be able to tailor impressive headers and footers for each logical part of your document.
See Also
- Understanding Sections in Word
- Omitting page numbers in Word
- Watermarks in Word 2003
- Sections and Numbering in Word 2003
- Section Breaks in Word 2003
