Changing the Link to Previous Default for Headers and Footers

Paul works as a technical writer and creates some documents that have an endless requirement to set new headers and footers for each document section. It is a pain to continually need to display the correct dialog box and clear the "link to previous" checkbox for both the headers and footers. Paul wonders if there is a way he can set the default to disassociate headers and footers when creating a section. He would prefer it to be the other way around, where he needs to explicitly set "link to previous" when he needs it.

There is no way to handle this with a setting in Word; it seems that the setting always returns to "link to previous." Instead you'll need to use a macro to accomplish a workaround for what you want. It is a relatively simple task to create a macro that creates a new section break and unlinks the headers and footers.

Sub AddNewSection()
    Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdSectionBreakNextPage
    ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.SeekView = wdSeekCurrentPageHeader
    Selection.HeaderFooter.LinkToPrevious = False

    ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.SeekView = wdSeekCurrentPageFooter
    Selection.HeaderFooter.LinkToPrevious = False
    ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.SeekView = wdSeekMainDocument
End Sub

The macro inserts a section break and then turns off the "link to previous" setting for the new section. You could easily add this macro to your Quick Access Toolbar or define a shortcut key to run it. The macro adds a "next page" section break; if you want a different type of section break, all you need to do is replace the wdSectionBreakNextPage with one of the other constants for sections breaks: wdSectionBreakContinuous (continuous section break), wdSectionBreakEvenPage (even-page section break), or wdSectionBreakOddPage (odd-page section break).

If you, instead, simply want to change all the "link to previous" settings for all the existing sections in your document, you can do so by using a different macro approach.

Sub UnlinkAllHeadersFooters()
    Dim s As Section
    On Error Resume Next

    For Each s In ActiveDocument.Sections
        s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterEvenPages).LinkToPrevious = False
        s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterFirstPage).LinkToPrevious = False
        s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).LinkToPrevious = False
        s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterEvenPages).LinkToPrevious = False
        s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterFirstPage).LinkToPrevious = False
        s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).LinkToPrevious = False
    Next s
End Sub

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13401) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, and 2013.