Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 20, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016
There may be times when you want to place information in a header or footer and have that information protected so a user cannot change it. For instance, you might want to ensure exact placement of text, a specific text treatment (font, size, etc.), or the inclusion of a graphic.
There are several ways to go about protecting this information. If you like macros, you could develop macros that place the information in the header or footer just before printing. This means, of course, that your macros effectively replace the existing printer-related commands used by Word. Such an approach could be a Pandora's Box, with changing one command leading necessarily to the change of another.
Perhaps the simplest answer is to place the header and footer in its own section and protect that section from changes. You can do that by following these general steps:
When you save your document, you can save it either as a regular document or as a template. Your header and footer information is now protected from unauthorized changes. The rest of the document can readily be changed.
When you protect a document in this manner, Word disables some tools so they cannot be used. You will need to test this solution in your environment to ensure that the lack of functionality is an acceptable trade-off to the protection offered to your header and footer.
There is one caveat to this: if your goal in doing the protection was to keep someone from accessing a graphic, rest assured that if someone can display the graphic on the screen, they can get it. That means that they can do a Print Preview operation, copy the screen to the Clipboard, and then use their favorite graphics editing program to extract the graphic. Unfortunately, there is no way around this, short of rewriting a couple of Word commands as mentioned earlier in this tip.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11567) 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: Protecting Headers and Footers.
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2018-05-30 04:47:20
Liam Potter
For someone who only uses word for simple document editing and was asked to provide an uneditted letterhead, this really didn't go into enough detail. No idea what a continuous break is, no idea how to protect the document as a form, or even what that means really.
A little more detail would be massively appreciated.
2018-02-27 16:06:14
This is good and works well. However, the option to 'Remove Header and footer' still exists on the Insert section of the ribbon and seems to work. Is there a way to turn this off (without macros as people don't like these understandably)?
2017-10-25 15:39:16
James
Appears you can't make changes but you can still delete them.
2017-10-17 00:58:14
Gareth
Hi Allen,
Brilliant Tip thank you!
Also useful for Creating "Document templates " with" Watermark Style" graphics that are positioned in the Header covering the whole page, then locked off using the continuous break method / protected Form method that you outlined.
Watermark doesn't work nearly as well, as it is affected by page margins, and can be changed by users.
Kind Regards
Gareth
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