Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. 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

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 22, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365

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, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. 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 three minus 2?

2023-08-22 23:54:44

PReinie

I usually just make a copy of the "source" document and change the name of that document to the new name, then open it and remove all the text. (Ctrl-a, Delete (key)). Or delete just the text that won't apply to the new document.

Most often the header and footer info are the same except the document name and/or path, so click on that and F9 update it to the current name (and pat) of the document.

2023-07-23 05:51:36

Roy Lasris

Another approach for 'transferring' headers/footers from one document to another:

1. Copy all the body text of the target document into memory. (Ctrl-A/Ctrl-C will work.) Close.

2. Open and then 'SaveAs' the source document (with the desired h/f's) using the name of the target. (This, of course, overwrites the target with the source's content, including the desired h/f's).

3. With the new target, press Ctrl-A (select all) and then Ctrl-V (replace with the target's original text). Save. Mission accomplished.

This works when you also want -- or at least willing to accept -- the styles of the old document to rule the target document.

2023-07-22 07:36:09

Paul Stregevsky

It works unless the header is pointing to a field code, like TITLE, that hasn't been defined in the second document. Then you're see an error message where the field code is missing. You can then define it in the new document. But you'll have to know what the field is called.

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