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: Deleting All Headers and Footers.

Deleting All Headers and Footers

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 5, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


1

If you work with documents you receive from other people, one of the tasks you may routinely need to do is delete all the headers and footers in the documents. One way to do this is to simply select the various headers and footers and delete them, but if the document contains many sections, doing so can be very time consuming. (Particularly if you consider that each section can have up to three different headers and footers.)

Repetitious, time-consuming tasks are always a prime candidate for macros; this is no exception. The following macro will zip right through each section of a document, deleting all the headers and footers that have been defined.

Sub RemoveHeadAndFoot()
    Dim oSec As Section
    Dim oHead As HeaderFooter
    Dim oFoot As HeaderFooter

    For Each oSec In ActiveDocument.Sections
        For Each oHead In oSec.Headers
            If oHead.Exists Then oHead.Range.Delete
        Next oHead

        For Each oFoot In oSec.Footers
            If oFoot.Exists Then oFoot.Range.Delete
        Next oFoot
    Next oSec
End Sub

This macro is very powerful—it doesn't ask if you want to proceed, nor does it consider what may be included in the headers and footers. It simply deletes them all, leaving your document with none. If you regularly process quite a few documents, you can easily assign the macro to a toolbar button, menu item, or shortcut key.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1777) 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: Deleting All Headers and Footers.

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. ...

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What is 6 - 6?

2022-02-24 11:58:16

Melissa Lalande

The macro worked very well when I was using Microsoft 2016, but ever since we switched to Microsoft 365 it stopped working. There is an error message saying that there is a compile errer in hidden module and gives us this link from the help:
(see Figure 1 below)

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/Language/Reference/User-Interface-Help/compile-error-in-hidden-modulemodule-name

is there anyway to adapt it for Microsoft 365?

thank you
Melissa

Figure 1. Error message from macro on Word 365 64 bit


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