A header in Microsoft Word is the area at the top of each page. Once you insert some content into the header in Word, it automatically copies to every page in the document. There are many things you can add to headers in Word including page numbers, letterheads, document titles, dates, and so on.
In this tutorial today, I want to show you how to add headers in your Word document.
How to insert a pre-defined header in Word
There are pre-defined header styles in Microsoft Word you can use to add beautiful headers into your document. These pre-defined headers are header templates where you can fill with your own content.
To add or insert a pre-defined header in Word:
- Launch Microsoft Word and open the project whose header you want to add.
- Go to the Insert tab, in the Header & Footer group, click on Header. This will pull down a drop-down box filled with header samples.
- From this library of Header styles, select the one that catches your interest.
As soon as you select one of these header styles, the header section will activate for you to edit the content. Change the placeholder text with your own content as shown in the following three column header screenshot:
At this point, the content in the header will appear on all the pages in the document except for pages that are separated with page breaks.
How to manually add a Header in Word
The above section explains how you can automatically add predefined headers in Word. This way, you get a template you can edit and include your own content and styles in the Header.
However, you can also create a header in Word from scratch without using the predefined template. Though, this will require more effort on your part.
So, to manually add a header in Microsoft Word, obey the instructions below:
- Open up your Word document.
- Double click at the top of any page to activate the header section.
- Now that you have the Header layer activated, add the content you wish for your header to contain.
- Type or paste text in the header and it’ll appear on every header on each page. You can format the text the way you want using the formatting tools on the home tab.
- Whilst the header layer is active, the Header & Footer Tools > Design tab becomes visible.
- On the Header & Footer Tools > Design tab, in the Insert category, you can insert pictures, date and time, and document info.
This is how you may insert a header in Word without using the predefined header option.
Adding page numbers to the Header in Word
Page numbers are one of the contents you can easily add to the Header and Footer area in Microsoft Word. With this technique, you can insert automatic page numbers that get numbered sequentially throughout your pages.
Without further ado, below are the options you can take to effortlessly add page numbers to the header section in Microsoft Word.
NOTE: There are two approaches to this. Both are explained below.
First Approach:
- Go to the Insert tab.
- In the Header & Footer group, click on Page Number.
- The Page Number drop-down will appear. Click on the Top of Page option.
- A list of sample page numbers will appear. Click any of the predefined page number styles to add it to your document.
Upon clicking on any of the page number styles, Word will automatically add page numbers to the Header of all the pages in the Document, with the selected style.
Second approach:
To add page numbers to the header section in Word:
- Double click on the top area of your document to activate the header section.
- Activating the header section will introduce the Design tab.
- On the Design tab, in the Header & Footer category, click on Page Number > Top of Page. This will display list of different page number styles. Select one that catches your interest to insert it into your document.
These are the two easy ways to add or insert page numbers to the header section of your document.