Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Word’s header and footer designs include layouts for headers and footers, as well as for placement of page numbering. This is particularly useful if you’re short on design skills. Because it means you can format the header and footer layout in your document, without a great deal of effort. But there are a few things to consider when making use of the pre-designed options. Read on to find out what those are.
Word’s pre-designed options are grouped in three galleries – Header, Footer and Page Number. These galleries sit on the Insert tab of the Word ribbon (Header & Footer group). They can also be found on the Header & Footer contextual tab, which appears when you insert or edit a header / footer.
Header and Footer options
Header and footer options correspond to Word’s pre‑designed cover page options. For example, the Ion (Dark) header and footer options have similar design aspects to the Ion (Dark) cover page.
If your document has (or will include) a pre-designed cover page, then it’s best to stick with the corresponding designs.
If you don’t like the corresponding options, you may choose a different design. When doing so, be sure to pick a design that appeals to you the most, but also one that doesn’t clash with the cover page.
When choosing a header and footer design, be sure to scan each of the galleries before making a selection. That way you’ll get a better idea of the options available. This will be especially helpful where you want to include content in both the header and footer. And/or where you want page numbering to sit in either the left or right margin.
Where you’d like page numbering to sit in the left or right margin, insert this first. The design and siting of the page margin options may determine the style of the header and/or footer you settle on. So this is an important first step.
Page Number options
There are several galleries to choose from when it comes to page number design in Word. These include:
- Top of Page;
- Bottom of Page;
- Page Margins; and
- Current Position.
Top of Page and Bottom of Page galleries
When you select an option from the Top of Page and Bottom of Page galleries, the layout overrides the current header or footer respectively. So be sure to steer clear of these galleries if you’re happy with the current header and footer layout in your document.
Instead, choose an option from either the Page Margins or Current Position galleries. These options don’t affect the layout of the existing header or footer.
Following are a few things to note about these two galleries, in particular …
Page Margins gallery
The options in the Page Margins gallery generally include other design elements. Given this, some options may clash with the design of existing headers and/or footers.
So again, if using an option from this gallery, be sure to add this before adding content to the header and/or footer. That is, because the design you choose may influence how you format these elements.
Depending on the option you choose, you may also need to adjust the left or right margin. Otherwise, you could find that page numbers butt up to or overlap content in the body of your document.
Current Position gallery
Options in the Current Position gallery are inserted wherever the cursor is placed. So you can add any of these to a header or footer, and it won’t override the layout.
Having said that, this gallery is a bit of a mixed bag.
When inserted, some options (e.g. the text only ones) will generally work seamlessly with the design of the content in the header or footer. Other options have distinct formatting and/or include decorative shapes. So these options may clash with existing content.
Given this, you’ll find the process of inserting page numbering from this gallery to be a bit hit and miss.
A simple solution is to use the Plain Number option (from this gallery). The Plain Number option adds the page number only, adopting the set formatting. You can then add the word ‘Page’ and/or other text / elements if you wish.
