Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Copying Headers and Footers.

Copying Headers and Footers

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated December 23, 2020)

If you have developed two documents that are closely related (perhaps they are even different versions of the same information), you may want to copy headers or footers from one document to the other. This is easy to do using standard editing techniques:

Select the first document.
Display the Insert tab of the ribbon.
Click either the Header or Footer tool in the Header & Footer group. Word displays a list of options.
Click either Edit Header or Edit Footer, depending on which you want to do. Word switches to Print Layout view (if necessary) and positions the insertion point within the header or footer. The design tab of the ribbon is also displayed.
Use the controls in the Navigation group to display the header or footer you want to copy.
Select all the elements (text and graphics) in the header or footer.
Press Ctrl+C. This copies the header or footer information to the Clipboard.
Select the second document.
Display the Insert tab of the ribbon.
Click either the Header or Footer tool in the Header & Footer group. Word displays a list of options.
Click either Edit Header or Edit Footer, depending on which you want to do. Word switches to Print Layout view (if necessary) and positions the insertion point within the header or footer. The design tab of the ribbon is also displayed.
Use the controls in the Navigation group to display the header or footer where you want to paste your header or footer that you copied in step 7.
Position the insertion point in the header or footer, then press Ctrl+V. The information in the Clipboard will be inserted in the header or footer.
Close the header or footer area for each of your documents. (Click the Close button at the right of the Design tab of the ribbon.)

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7127) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Copying 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. Learn more about Allen...

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What is nine minus 5?

2019-10-29 14:13:46

allen why

Page numbers made this really difficult, Allen you weren't very helpful

2018-05-25 09:17:52

Andrew

I usually do this in a converse way: I put the main text in a copy of the original document with the headers and footers already in place.

Deborah: try making the page formatting of the new document (especially the margins) the same as the old document before pasting, and using the settings to keep the original text formatting when pasting.

Andy

2018-05-24 12:40:33

Deborah

Tried this, everything shifts around when I paste.

2018-01-05 10:19:15

Mark Meyer

Worked exactly as described. Thanks for posting this tip site. I almost bought a $20.00 book just for this information.

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