Applying Standard Headers and Footers to a Document

Aaron often receives documents from others in which he needs to standardize the appearance of the document. He can attach a template, which allows him to apply styles to the text in the document. What he really needs, though, is a way to attach standard headers and footers to the document. He's defined those in his template, but attaching the template doesn't add the headers and footers. He wonders if there is an easy way to add standard headers and footers to these documents.

When you attach a template to an existing document, what you are essentially doing is providing the document access to the set of styles and macros stored in the template. The only way for the document to acquire the page- or section-level characteristics of the template is to create a document based on that template. This is why many people choose to follow this general sequence:

1. Create a brand-new document based on the template. (This is the target document.)
2. Open the document received from others; the one you want to standardize. (This is the source document.)
3. Copy the text from the source document and paste it in the target document.

If you cannot, for some reason, go this route, the next best thing is to create a set of Building Blocks that define the text you want in your header and footer. You can then save time by using the Building Blocks to add the headers and footers into any document you wish—including the one you want to standardize.

Finally, if you wanted to, you could create a macro to add in the desired headers and footers. The macro doesn't have to be fancy; here's one that simply adds standardized header and footer text to each section in the document:

Sub MyHeadersAndFooters()
    Dim i As Long

    For i = 1 To ActiveDocument.Sections.Count
        With ActiveDocument.Sections(i)
            .Headers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).Range.Text = "Header Text Here"
            .Footers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).Range.Text = "Footer Text Here"
        End With
    Next i
End Sub

In order to use the macro, simply replace "Header Text Here" and "Footer Text Here" with your desired header and footer text. This macro is only a starting point, as it doesn't apply any special styles or include any fields (such as page numbers) that you may need.

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