Header and Footer in Word: The Complete Guide

If you are looking for a better understanding of what a header and a footer in Microsoft Word is, look no further.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn things like how to activate and add content to a header or footer in Word.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

What is Header and Footer in Word?

Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word appear at the top and bottom margin of each page, respectively. They are separate sections from the body of your document (text area) and both sections can’t be activated at the same time. They (Header and Footer) usually appear inactive when the text area is active. And the text area also falls behind and inactive when the Header and Footer area is active.

Once you activate the Header and Footer section, you can place text and graphics on one page, and it’ll appear on every page within the document. That’s why Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word are used for page numbers, titles, dates, watermarks, logos or letterheads in general.

A little bit of misunderstanding concerns how to insert headers and footers into Word. You may be surprised to learn that Headers and Footers are not inserted – they are already there by default. They are only empty. So, when you say you are creating or inserting a header or footer in Word, you are doing neither. Instead, you are just adding content to the empty header or footer that already exists.

Let’s see how you can activate and add content to the Header and Footer area in Word.

How to Activate the Header and Footer layer

As I mentioned before, the Header and Footer section or layer already exist in your document. However, you first of all must activate this section if you need to add some content on it

To activate the Header and Footer section of your Word document, double-click over the top or bottom area of any page. The Header and Footer area will get activated, introducing the Header & Footer Tools tabs with the design tab active. When the Header and Footer layer is active, the main body of your document will remain visible but is grayed out to indicate that you cannot edit it whilst the Header and Footer sections is active.

How to insert a Header or Footer in Word

Even though the Header and Footer sections already exist in your Word document, there are predefined headers and footers that you can use to insert content into your blank header or footer.

To insert a header in Word:

• Go to the Insert tab.
• In the Header & Footer group, click on the Header button to display a gallery of predefined headers.

• From this gallery, search for the Header style you prefer, and then click on it to insert it into your document. In this example, we’ll insert the Three Columns header.
• However, if any of the built-in Header styles doesn’t catch your interest, at the bottom of the drop-down, click on More Headers from Office.com to explore more options.

• As soon as you click on the Header you want to insert, the header section will become active where you can type anything you want, and you can apply any type of formatting you want.

This is how you may insert a header in Microsoft Word.

To insert a Footer in Word:

• Go to the Insert tab.
• In the Header & Footer category, click on the Footer button to display a gallery of sample footers.

• From this gallery, search for the Footer style you want, and then click on it to insert it into your document. In this example, we’ll insert the Three Columns footer.
• However, if any of the sample footers doesn’t catch your interest, at the bottom of the drop-down, click on More Footers from Office.com to explore more footer options.

• As soon as you click on the footer you want to insert into your document, the footer section will become active where you can type anything you want, and you can apply any type of formatting you want.

This is how you may insert a footer into Microsoft Word.