Lu is a lawyer in Australia who has now had to change to Word for work purposes. He would like to be able to put two footers on each page of his document. He is required by law to have a "liability warning" appear on all correspondence, so he has placed that warning in a footer. However, in multipage documents Lu would like a note to also appear at the bottom of each page indicating that a further page is following such as ".../2" at the bottom of page 1 to indicate that there is a page 2 to follow. He wonders how he can have a second footer to include this indicator.
The headers and footers you can include in Word are quite flexible, although that flexibility may not be apparent to someone just starting out with the program as Lu is. While Word doesn't technically allow the definition of multiple footers for any given page, there are actually several different ways that Lu's scenario can be approached, depending on his exact needs. Those needs are defined, in this case, by the number of pages in a document.
First, if the document is a single page, then you only need the liability warning to appear at the bottom of the page. That is easy; just stuff the warning into the footer and you are good to go.
If the document is multiple pages, however, then you might want the liability warning to appear only one time, such as on the first page of the document and not on subsequent pages. That is easy, too—just configure Word for a different footer on the first page of the document. Follow these steps:
Figure 1. Controlling different footers for a document.
Figure 2. Word indicates where a footer will appear.
That's it; your liability warning will appear on the first page and all subsequent pages will contain just the continuation text.
If you want to switch the scenario so that all the pages contain the continuation text but only the last page contains the liability warning, then things get a bit trickier. The reason is because Word doesn't include a "last-page footer" like it does a first-page footer. Instead, you'll need to resort to the use of fields in your footer to indicate what you want on the last page vs. what is on the other pages. How you do this has been covered in other WordTips.
The steps already described mention putting your liability warning in one footer paragraph and your continuation text in a different footer paragraph. (See steps 7 through 10.) Some people prefer to get a bit fancier with what they enter in the footers and use a table there. This is easy enough to do; Word has no problem with inserting a table in a footer. You could then use different rows, column, and cells in the table to contain your liability warning, your continuation text, and anything else you want placed there.
Another approach entirely is to remember that headers and footers are an attribute of sections, meaning that each section in your document can have a different set of headers and footers than other sections. So, you could place a section break (of any type) within your document and then define a different footer for the pages before the section break and a different footer for the pages after the section break. The trick is to remember that you need to "unlink" the footer in the second section from the footer in the first section. You do that by following these steps:
Figure 3. Modifying linkage of footer information.
Of course, things get trickier as you add more and more sections to your document. That is because, again, headers and footers are an attribute of sections, and each section can have a different set of headers and footers. So, if your document has four sections (each delineated by a section break), then you can have 12 different headers (four first-page headers, four odd-page headers, and four even-page headers) and 12 different footers (again, four first-page, four odd-page, and four even-page). It can take some thought to figure out what you want to appear in these headers in your final document.
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2016-10-12 11:57:59
Cris Leary
I have Word 2016, and I am working on a handbook which has several appendices that each have their own footer title and page number, i.e. "word pg 1-6"
"excel pg 1-9." I need to keep that title and pg numbering, but also the entire document from 1- 400. How do I keep each appendices' title and page number separate from the entire page numbering?
2014-09-30 14:05:56
Cora Knutson
Just an added hint for the document tracking lawyers often do:
If you wish to add a document or revision number to your footer, I suggest you go to File => Properties => Advanced Properties and select the Custom Tab. Here you can create something like “DocNum” or "RevNum", select the Type of field (probably Text) and select the “Add” button. Then in your footer, you can add this field so that your document/revision number prints on the bottom of every page (Insert => Quick Parts => DocProperty => [the assigned name]). This extra step (compared to just putting the number in the footer) is nice when you have the document number in different sections of the document (for example, a principal document and several exhibits/attachments which may have different footers). Then when the document is revised, you can revise the document/revision number in just one location (the File Properties) rather than having to go to each section of the document to update it.
2014-09-23 23:24:59
Ken Endacott
If you want the liability statement at the bottom of every page, put it in a borderless textbox in the header and drag it down to the bottom of the page. Then set the textbox wrapping to Top and Bottom.
The footer is then available to insert .../n. You won't want the .../n on the last page so anywhere in the second last page put a Continuous Section Break then in the last page footer remove the Link to Previous.
2014-09-23 08:47:25
ESV
Another way to have the liability statement on every page is to use the watermark feature.
2014-09-20 12:36:26
JMN
Ooops! I've now noticed my Word has got the same as the article. I didn't see that at the time. So, my apologies and thanks very much for this article. It' so very useful
Cheers and thanks
2014-09-20 10:00:30
JMN
This instruction doesn't show the 2010 ribbon so unable to follow and achieve this.
Have you / anyone got instructions for doing this in Word 2010, please?
Thanks
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