Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Creating Page Footers and Headers.

Creating Page Footers and Headers

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 13, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Word allows you to add headers and footers to your document. Headers are nothing more than repeating text that appears at the top of every page of your printed document, whereas footers appear at the bottom of each page. The beauty of headers and footers is that they only have to be defined once, and then Word places them on your printed pages automatically. To define a page header or footer, do the following:

Choose Header and Footer from the View menu. You will see the Header and Footer dialog box, and a header box should appear at the top of the current page.
If desired, enter the information for the header, formatting it as you would format normal text in your document.
Click on the Switch Between Header and Footer tool on the dialog box.
If desired, enter the information for the footer, formatting it as you would format normal text in your document.
Click on Close when your headers and footers are defined the way you want them.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (251) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Creating Page Footers and Headers.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is 6 - 3?

2021-11-15 08:38:42

Kathleen ONeill

Pagination. Changing the page numbers between the cover page, the table of contents and then the main document. It kills me every time. Formatting. Going between centered titles and back to numerical numbering.

These are things I wish I had learned.

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