How to insert Headers and Footers in MS Word

Headers and footers are pieces of text, or graphics, that appear at the top and bottom of a page. After you set up a header and footer, they will appear on all of your pages. You can add a page number to a header or footer, and Microsoft Word will automatically insert the right page number for you.

To set up a header and footer for your Word document, do the following.

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  From the View menu, Click Header and Footer

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  The following toolbar appears on your page:

Notice how the top of your page has dashed lines. This is the Header area. The Header and Footer toolbar can be quite complex. To make life easier, we're not going to use it much.

The cursor will already be flashing inside the Header area, waiting for you to type some text. Before you type anything, do this:

 

1. Set up a Tab stop by clicking on the Format menu at the top , then select Tabs


2. From the dialogue box that pops up, enter 5 cm as a tab stop position


3. Click the "Set" button


4. Click OK


5. Next, press the Tab key on your keyboard


6. Your cursor will jump to the tab stop position you set - 5 centimetres


7. Type in the words Little Thumb

We're now going to draw a line underneath Little Thumb, but from the left edge of our page to the final "b". When we're finished, it will look like this:

That's what we want to appear on every page, except the first page. We'll learn how to exclude the first page in a moment, but to get the line underneath your text you'll need to use the drawing tools. This is not the only way to do it, but as you'll be using the drawing tools in a later section, it's well worth making a start on them now.