Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2013

Using Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2013: Video

This video shows you how to use the headers and footers in Microsoft Word 2013. For the complete tutorial, click here.

Using Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2013: Overview

All documents based on the “Normal” template contain space for header and footer information. In order to view and edit the content of the headers and footers while working in the document, however, you will need to be using the “Print Layout” view of the document. To view and edit header and footer information in your document, you can select either the “Header” or “Footer” buttons, as needed, from within the “Header & Footer” group on the “Insert” tab in the Ribbon. In the drop-down menu for each button, you can then choose either the “Edit Header” or “Edit Footer” command to place the insertion marker into either the header or footer sections, depending on your selection. Alternately, you can simply double-click into either the header or footer areas in the document to place the insertion marker into the header or footer.

Once you have entered either the header or footer sections, you will also see a new tab in the Ribbon that you can use to assist you in editing information in the headers and footers. Also note that when you have entered into the header or footer, you cannot edit the content of the body of the document until you switch back to the normal editing mode. You can do this by either clicking the “Close Header and Footer” button in the “Close” group on the “Design” tab of the “Header & Footer Tools” contextual tab in the Ribbon, or by simply double-clicking back into the body of the document.

When editing the headers and footers, you can move between the headers and the footers using the buttons provided in the “Navigation” group on the “Design” tab of the “Header & Footer Tools” contextual tab in the Ribbon. Note that you can also press the “Up” and “Down” arrows on your keyboard to move between the headers and the footers, as well.

Within the header and footer sections, you can type or insert whatever information you want to appear. Common content includes information such as the company name, page numbering fields, or business logos. For much of the commonly inserted content, you can use the buttons available in the “Insert” group on the “Design” tab in the “Header & Footer Tools” contextual tab within the Ribbon. You can click the “Date & Time” button to open the “Date and Time” dialog box, where you can select the format for the date and time stamp that you want to have appear. If you want the date and time to automatically update when the document is opened, then check the “Update automatically” checkbox within this dialog box before clicking the “OK” button. Note that when you insert the date and time in this manner, Word inserts a data field to represent the information, instead of inserting simple, static (unchanging) text. The advantage to using a data field in a document is that it is dynamic, which means that it automatically updates itself when the document is opened. Much of the content that you want to have appear in a header or footer is best inserted using data fields. If using Word 2013, you can click the “Document Info” button to then insert common document information fields from the drop-down menu that appears. Word contains many standard fields of information that you can insert into a document, such as the page number, the total number of pages, the date the document was last modified, and the author, for example. To view a listing of the various data fields that you can insert into a document, you can click the “Quick Parts” button in the “Insert” group in the “Header & Footer Tools” context tab. From the drop-down menu, select the “Field…” command to view the listing of data fields available in the “Field” dialog box. To view all available fields, ensure that the “(All)” choice is selected from the “Categories:” drop-down. Below that, then, you will see a listing of all of the available data fields shown in the “Field names:” scroll box. Select the name of the field that you would like to insert from the list, and set any additional options for the selected field to the right of the list. Then click the “OK” button to insert the field. Back in the “Insert” group on the “Design” tab of the “Header & Footer Tools” contextual tab, you can also click the “Pictures” button to insert a picture from your computer’s file system. If you wish to insert clip art from your Office collection or from the Internet, then you can click the “Online Pictures” (“Clip Art” in Word 2010:2007) button to open a panel where you can browse for pictures to insert.

Some documents need more than a single header and footer. For example, you may want the first page of a document to not show any header or footer information, but then show header and footer information beginning on page two of the document. You can use the “Options” group on the “Design” tab in the “Header & Footer Tools” contextual tab to create a different set of headers and footers for the odd and even pages in your document or for the first page of your document. To do this, just check the desired checkboxes in this group. Note that the “Show Document Text” checkbox simply toggles the display of the text within the body of the document on or off. It doesn’t impact the headers or footers in any way. Once you have selected the type of headers and footers that you want to have appear in your document using these checkbox, you will then need to enter the specific header and footer information that you want to have appear within each header and footer you chose to include.