Many people who come to Word from a WordPerfect environment are curious as to how you can suppress headers and footers in your document. While WordPerfect makes this very easy, the method used in Word is much more flexible (albeit nowhere near as easy).
Word allows you to create headers and footers for each section of your document. (This is a critical point to keep in mind, so it bears repeating: Word ties headers and footers to sections and allows you to modify the header or footer on a section-by-section basis.) Thus, if you have eight sections in your document, each section can have its own header and footer. By default, headers and footers for any new sections are the same as the section just before it. If you want to suppress the existing header or footer in a particular section of your document, follow these steps:
Figure 1. Modifying the linkage of the header or footer.
Now, if you preview your document or print it out, you can see there are headers or footers in each section except the one where you deleted them.
The foregoing steps work fine if you want to suppress a header or footer on a page other than the first page of a section. (Remember—headers and footers are tied to sections and can vary for each section in a document.) If you want to only suppress headers or footers on the first page of each section in your document—perhaps you have one section for each chapter in a book-length document and you want to suppress the header or footer on the first page of each chapter—then follow these steps:
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9383) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Suppressing Headers or Footers.
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2018-07-25 12:37:27
Chris Ohland
I've used your techniques with success except in one circumstance. The cover page of my document needs no header or footer. I have a next page section break at the bottom of the first page and the header in Section 2 does not select the ink to Previous tool. Thus, Section 1 and 2 should behave independent of each other but that is not the case. I use a bottom border under the header and above the footer text of Section 2. For unknown reasons, Section 1 wants to use the Section 2 header and footer style and the cover page shows a top and bottom border line but without the text. I've removed the style from the Section 1 header and footer, used an alternate style (i.e., named Header 2 and Footer 2 that has not font features, and other combinations but the border lines comes back. Oh, what to do?
Also, another add issues. When I compare revisions of a document that updates the header/footer information to an earlier version with different text/format, the compare feature wants to keep the older version header/footer information.
Chris
2017-07-31 18:35:11
I use Word 2010. The "Different First Page" feature is great, but I wish Microsoft would change it to affect headers and footers separately. If I want a different header for my chapter title, I still want my page numbers to continue unchanged. As it is, after I click the "Different First Page", I then have to re-create the page number footer for that first page. I have not been able to figure out a fix for this. Has it been improved in 2013?
2016-07-27 13:32:28
Connie Goss
Is there a way to apply "different first page" to the header ONLY, leaving the footers the same?
2016-01-21 11:26:17
robin
Working with an invoice document where the inv info is contained in a table and following the table are a lot of notes. The client would like the invoice coupon (in the footer) to be on the first page only but because inv info may be multiple pages, the foot continues with those multiple pages.
Is there a way to do that?
2015-05-31 21:12:55
Charles Morford
I have tried on two occasions to subscribe to your newsletter without success. You have some good tips but i really want your weekly newsletter.
2015-02-04 12:40:35
Commenter
The "flexibility" of this feature is totally cancelled out and negated by its ridiculously complicated series of steps to achieve a very simple result. Absolutely absurd. The "flexibility" is a code word and a cover story for poor design, something most people will NEVER NEED. Thank you for unnecessary complexity, Microsoft!
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