Locked lesson.

Upgrade

About this lesson

Learn how to add Headers and Footers to a document.

Quick reference

Headers and Footers

​
​

Learn how to work with Headers and Footers and the ribbon features included.

When to use

Use a header or footer when you have some information that you would like to be automatically added to every page in your document, for example your name on a report, or your logo on a business letter.

Instructions

Access Header with the mouse:

  1. Move your mouse to the top margin of the page and double-click. 
    Observe the three changes to your screen:
    1. The document portion is shaded and the header portion is bright
    2. The dashed line appears with the header label ​
    3. A new ribbon opens at the top: Icon Description automatically generated with low confidence ​
  2. You can also scroll to the bottom to adjust your Footer or access it via the double click into the bottom margin of the page.

Access Header with the Insert Ribbon:

​

  1. Click the Insert Ribbon
  2. Click Header drop-down arrow and choose a Header layout
  3. Enter the text to display

Two options to close the Header/Footer:

  1. Move your mouse to the document page and double-click. 
    OR
  2. Choose “Close Header/Footer” on the Header & Footer Tools ribbon

Login to download
  • 00:04 Using headers and footers in documents is one of the most
  • 00:07 common things you will be doing inside most of your documents.
  • 00:11 Please look at the top of my exercise document.
  • 00:13 You'll see kind of a dimmed down GoSkills logo and
  • 00:17 then on the left some text, Enter Date Here.
  • 00:20 If I scroll to the bottom you'll see the GoSkills website, also dimmed down.
  • 00:25 If I print these, they'll be full brightness.
  • 00:28 But that's my indicator right now that those aren't part of my document.
  • 00:31 They're sitting in the background as a header footer in my document.
  • 00:35 Now, the fastest way to get into a header footer,
  • 00:37 just move your mouse into that top margin of your document and double click.
  • 00:41 Right away, a couple things happened.
  • 00:43 You can see that the logo is bright, the text is dark,
  • 00:47 became full black, but my document dimmed down.
  • 00:51 I also have a guideline across, marked as the header.
  • 00:54 Another thing that happened is a Header Footer ribbon up on top.
  • 00:56 Notice on the far right side I can close Header Footer just by hitting that X.
  • 01:02 Another way to close it is just double click in the document,
  • 01:06 that closed it as well.
  • 01:08 All right, I want to go right back there, but a different way.
  • 01:11 I'm going to go to the Insert ribbon and over on the right hand side,
  • 01:14 there's a Header Footer section.
  • 01:16 And I can click on Header and choose any one of these I want,
  • 01:20 noting that by choosing one of these, it will overwrite what you have.
  • 01:25 Instead, I'm going to come down here to Edit Header and it opened it up.
  • 01:29 That's why I think a double click is much faster than that.
  • 01:32 Another way to use this ribbon to your advantage is right up here,
  • 01:36 we have a Go to Footer button.
  • 01:38 When I activate that, it zips me right down to my footer.
  • 01:42 Go to Header zips me right back up to the top.
  • 01:46 Notice we have Previous and Next because you can break a document into sections,
  • 01:50 and you can have different headers for different sections.
  • 01:53 That's an advanced lesson that we'll cover later on.
  • 01:56 Check out right over here, we have a Dte and Time button.
  • 02:00 So I'm going to select the Enter Date Here, just this text.
  • 02:04 Now if I go too far and grab that space bar behind it,
  • 02:08 it also will wipe out my logo.
  • 02:10 So very carefully I only want to select just the text.
  • 02:15 Now I can come up to Date Time, choose whichever time stamp I prefer, and hit OK.
  • 02:22 Let's take a look at multiple pages.
  • 02:24 This is a two page document.
  • 02:26 I'm going to click on multiple pages.
  • 02:28 Now my entire document is wide open to my headers and footers.
  • 02:31 The indicator of course says headers.
  • 02:34 Watch what happens when I reposition the logo.
  • 02:36 Select it once, click and drag it.
  • 02:38 Notice it's moving on both sides.
  • 02:41 I can come to the one on the right.
  • 02:43 It's moving on both sides.
  • 02:45 You see, those are linked.
  • 02:46 They're not two separate logos on each page.
  • 02:49 No, they are linked.
  • 02:50 So one logo will spill through the entire document until I tell it not to.
  • 02:55 Same story with the footers.
  • 02:57 Whatever I type on one page, like a page number, will show up on all pages.
  • 03:06 Now we have an upcoming lesson on page numbers that'll be better than that one,
  • 03:10 but real quickly, that's how you put a page number in.
  • 03:13 Okay, I'm going to go back to my header.
  • 03:16 In order to put a picture or a logo into a header, you activate the header area.
  • 03:21 You come up to Pictures and you select your pictures.
  • 03:23 But after your picture is selected, we can edit that picture because your
  • 03:28 normal picture ribbon will appear up on top.
  • 03:31 So I can actually edit this picture right now, change coloring,
  • 03:35 change the border of it, do anything I want to it, crop it.
  • 03:39 So it's very interesting.
  • 03:40 No matter what you put inside your headers,
  • 03:43 you still have full use of all the other ribbons while you're inside that header.
  • 03:47 All right, that's it for this lesson on headers.
  • 03:50 To activate my document again, just double click inside the document.
  • 03:54 The headers go dim, the document brightens up.
  • 03:57 That's it.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Gift this course