Header and Footer Navigation and Design

Word provides a number of different tools that enable you to control the way headers and footers are displayed and formatted. In this section, you’ll learn what those are and where to find them in the new Word 2007.

Editing the header/footer areas

The main set of controls are contained in the Header & Footer Tools Design tab of the Ribbon, shown in Figure 8-15. To display the Design tab, double-click the header or footer area in a document. Or, from the Insert tab, choose Header Edit Header (or Footer Edit Footer). Once the header/footer layer is open for editing, either header or footer can be edited, as can items inserted into the side area (e.g., page numbers in the side margins), as well as watermarks.

Notice the Go To Header and Go To Footer commands in the Navigation group on the Design tab. You can use those commands to quickly switch back and forth between the header and footer areas, but as suggested by Figure 8-14, both areas are equally accessible at the same time.

Header and footer styles

By default, Word’s headers and footers use built-in paragraph styles named Header and Footer. Both are formatted with a center tab and a right-aligned tab to facilitate placement of text and other items inside headers or footers. This enables you to have three distinct components that reside at the left, center, and right within the header or footer without having to resort to using a table, text box, or other devices (although tables and text boxes are perfectly acceptable in headers and footers).

For example, to create a header with a left-adjusted date, a centered document name, and a right-adjusted author’s name, you would enter the date, press Tab, enter the document name, press Tab, and finally type the author’s name, as shown in Figure 8-16.

Section surfing

When editing the header/footer layer of a document, you can use the mouse or keyboard keys to navigate as needed. As long as you don’t double-click in the text area of the document, the header and footer area remains open for business.

In a long document that contains many sections, however, scrolling can be tedious and imprecise. For greater control and precision, you can use the Previous Section and Next Section tools in the Navigation section of the Header & Footer Tools Design tab.

Link to previous

Different document sections can contain different headers and footers. When Link to Previous is selected (in the Navigation group of the Header & Footer Tools Design tab) for any given header or footer, that header or footer is the same as that for the previous section. By default, when you add a new document section, its headers and footers inherit the header and footer settings of the previous section.

To unlink the currently selected header or footer from the header or footer in the previous section (which will allow the current section to maintain a distinct header or footer), click Link to Previous to toggle it off. Observe the difference between the upper and lower Link to Previous buttons shown in Figure 8-17.

Note that headers and footers in any section have independent Link to Previous settings. While Link to Previous initially is turned on for all new sections that are created, when you turn it off for any given header, the corresponding footer remains linked to the previous footer. This gives you additional control over how document information is presented.

Different first page

Most formal reports and indeed many other formal documents typically do not use page numbers on the first page. To keep users from almost always having to make such documents multi-section documents, Word lets you set an exception for the first page of each document section. To enable this option for any given document section, display a header or footer in that section, and click the Different First Page option in the Options group of the Header & Footer Tools Design tap (refer to Figure 8-15).

In a way, this is like a “link to previous” option that you can apply to different document sections. Unlike Link to Previous, there is no telltale toggle tool to tell you the setting for the current section. Instead, there’s a checkbox that indicates whether the option is turned on or off. As you navigate across different header/footer areas in a multi-section document, the checkmark appears or disappears to indicate the setting for the current section. Also unlike the Link to Previous option, Different First Page cannot be different for header and footer. You cannot suppress just one. To accomplish that, you would need distinct document sections (separated by a section break).

Different odd and even pages

You can, without using section breaks, instruct Word to maintain different headers and footers on odd and even pages. A common application is for use in book/booklet printing, where the header/footer always appears closest to the outside edge of the paper—left for left pages, and right for right pages. This checkbox feature, also in the Options group in the Header & Footer Tools Design tab, works in the same way as the Different First Page option and is set per section and not individually for headers and footers.

Show document text

Sometimes, having document text showing is useful, and helps provide a frame of reference for headers and footers. Other times, however, it can be distracting and can make it harder to identify header and footer text, particularly if you’re actually using gray fonts in the header/footer area. Displayed text also can make it difficult to access graphics that are stored in the header or footer layer.

By default, Show Document Text is enabled. To hide document text, click to remove the check next to Show Document Text in the Options group of the Header & Footer Tools Design tab.

Distance from edge of paper

Headers and footers are printed in the margin area. The margin is the area between the edge of the paper and the edge of the text layer in the body of the document. If the header or footer is too “tall” for a given page, Word reduces the height of the text layer on-the-fly so that the header or footer can be printed. This assumes that the distances between the top/bottom of the header/footer and respective edge of the paper are kosher with respect to the nonprintable areas of the paper.

Printers have a nonprintable area around the perimeter of the paper. This is an area in which it is mechanically impossible for a given printer to print. Windows’ printer drivers do a good job of calculating the margin so that the printer does not try to print in the nonprintable region. When the margin is too small, Word will warn you.

Word does not warn you, however, if the header or footer extends too far into the margin. When this happens, all or part of the header or footer is cut off. Everything might look fine in Print Preview, and there is no warning, but part of the footer or header will be printed in the Twilight Zone.

You can rein the document in using the Header from Top and Footer from Bottom settings in the Header & Footer Design tab’s Position group. If you find that the header or footer is being cut off, determine how much is being cut off and make that much additional allowance. For example, if .25″ of text is being cut off of the footer, then increase Footer from Bottom by that amount.