Centering header in word

Patsy has a document that has headers and footers in it. Each has information at three places: left, centered, and right. If she later changes the margins of the document, the previously centered portion is no longer centered. (The center-aligned tab was set based upon the old line width, which is no longer valid after the margin change.) Patsy wonders if there is a way to set up the header or footers so that the centered information remains centered, even if she needs to change margins.

The traditional way to solve this problem is to put a three-celled, single-row table in the header or footer. You can put text in the left, center, and right cells and then format or align that text any way you like within the cell. As long as the table width is set to 100%, it will adjust automatically to any changes in the overall line width.

There is an even better way to get the desired result: through the use of alignment tabs. Follow these steps:

1. Open the header or footer area, depending on which one you want to change. (Simply double-click in the header or footer area to open it to editing.)
2. Type the text you want left-aligned in the header or footer.
3. Display the Header & Footer tab of the ribbon or, in Word 2007, the Design tab of the ribbon.
4. In the Position group, click the Insert Alignment Tab tool. Word displays the Alignment Tab dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Alignment Tab dialog box.

5. Click the Center radio button.
6. Make sure the Align Relative To drop-down list is set to Margin.
7. Click OK to close the Alignment tab dialog box.
8. Type the information you want centered in the header or footer.
9. Again click the Insert Alignment Tab tool, as you did in step 4. Word again displays the Alignment Tab dialog box.
10. Click the Right radio button.
11. Make sure the Align Relative To drop-down list is set to Margin.
12. Click OK to close the Alignment tab dialog box.
13. Type the information you want right-aligned in the header or footer.
14. Close the header or footer area by clicking in the main document.

If you have non-printing characters visible on your screen, you’ll notice that Word displays the alignment tab using the familiar arrow character it normally uses for tabs. While alignment tabs, in this respect, look like regular tabs, they are very different. Regular tabs are set at a particular distance from the left margin, while alignment tabs are set at a relative position (left, center, or right) to both margins. This means that if you later make a formatting change that adjusts those margins (such as Patsy did), change paper size, or even change from portrait to landscape orientation, the alignment tabs adjust the information that follows them relative to the margin change. This is very powerful!

I noted that if you have non-printing characters visible then alignment tabs look like regular tabs. If you need (for some reason) to determine whether a tab character is a normal tab or an alignment tab, one way to do so is to try deleting it. Position the insertion point just to the left of the tab character and press the Delete key. If the tab disappears, then it was a regular tab. If the symbol for the tab character (the arrow) is, instead, simply selected, then that is an alignment tab.

Since alignment tabs were introduced in Word 2007, they are only viable in documents saved in the DOCX or DOCM formats (or templates saved in the newer file format). If you are working on a document using the older DOC file format or you are working in compatibility mode, then alignment tabs have no efficacy—they are treated as regular tabs.

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I didn’t know you could do this!! Not until I read this article, anyway.

One of the annoyances with earlier versions of Word was what happened to left-, centre-, and right-aligned text in headers and footers when you inserted a landscape section. The workaround that many people used to control the placement was borderless tables in the headers/footers combined with ‘AutoFit to Window’.

Well, you don’t have to anymore! It seems this ‘new’ feature has been around since Word 2007, but I must have missed it.

Here’s how to set up a test document to show you how it works; it works the same for headers and footers — I only describe it for headers in these steps:

1. Start a new (blank) Word document.
2. Press Enter a couple of times to add some empty paragraphs.
3. Insert a ‘Next Page’ section break (Page Layout tab > Breaks > Next Page).
4. Press Enter a couple more times, then insert another Next Page section break. You should now have three blank pages in your test document.
5. Place your cursor anywhere in page two prior to the section break, then make change this section to landscape orientation (Page Layout tab > Orientation > Landscape).
6. Go back to page one and double-click in the header area to open the header/footer area.
7. On the Header & Footer Tools > Design tab, click Insert Alignment Tab.
   
8. On the Alignment Tab window, select Left then click OK. Leave all other settings as they are.
   
9. Type some text in the header at the cursor position (e.g. ‘left align’).
10. At the end of the text you just typed, click Insert Alignment Tab again.
11. On the Alignment Tab window, select Center then click OK.
12. Type some more text (e.g. ‘center align’). Look what happens — the text you just typed automatically goes to the center position in the header!
13. At the end of the text you just typed, click Insert Alignment Tab again.
14. On the Alignment Tab window, select Right then click OK.
15. Type some more text (e.g. ‘right align’). The text you just typed automatically goes to the right position in the header.
16. Now check what’s happened on page two — the text you just typed and the tabs you inserted using this method have automatically adjusted for the dimensions of the landscape page.
17. Now go to page three — this is a portrait page, and the header text has readjusted back to suit that orientation.

Note: If you adjust the margins for the page, the header/footer text alignment also adjusts to suit.

Clever, huh?

See also:

• http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/sections2007.htm#Portrait&Landscape

[Link last checked July 2014]

Apply and Customize Headings in Word Documents

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated April 19, 2022

Applies to: Microsoft^® Word^® 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021 or 365 (Windows)

You can create headings in Microsoft Word documents by applying Word’s built-in heading styles (such as Heading 1 or Heading 2). After you have applied styles, you can modify them and change the font, size, color, and other formatting attributes so the entire document will update. Once you have applied heading styles, you’ll be able to navigate to the headings using the Navigation Pane and create a table of contents.

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Heading styles are very important because they create structure in your documents and are readable by screen readers or assistive technology programs used by people with vision impairments. They can also save you a lot of time formatting and reformatting documents.

In addition to creating structure, heading styles are also used to:

• Generate a table of contents
• Reformat a document using Style Sets
• Navigate using the Navigation Pane (select Navigation Pane on the View tab in the Ribbon)
• Rearrange a document using the Outline View
• Create a structured PDF (portable document format) file with heading tags

Note: Screenshots in this article are from Word 365 but are very similar in previous versions of Word.

Creating headings by applying Word heading styles

To create or designate headings, you will need to apply the built-in heading styles in order (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and so) to paragraphs. There are 9 levels of headings available in Word.

Heading styles are technically available as paragraph and character styles, but it’s important to apply them as paragraph styles to entire paragraphs. A paragraph in Word is anything with a hard return after it (you have pressed Return or Enter).

Heading styles are affected by your theme choices (overall theme, color theme, and font theme). You can change theme options using the Design tab in the Ribbon.

To create headings by applying heading styles:

1. Click in the paragraph (title or subheading) you want to designate or format as a heading.
2. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon.
3. Click the heading style you want in the Styles Gallery (such as Heading 1) in the Style group. You may need to click the More arrow on the bottom right of the Styles Gallery to view more styles and then click the style you want to use.

All available heading styles do not appear initially in the Styles Gallery. When you apply a heading level (such as Heading 3), an additional heading level should appear in the Gallery (such as Heading 4).

The Styles Gallery appears on the Home tab in the Ribbon and typically displays top level headings:

If you click the More arrow on the bottom right of the Styles Gallery, an expanded gallery appears:

Modifying or customizing heading styles using the Styles task pane

If you modify heading styles, every instance of the modified style will change in your document. Not only will this save time, but it will also ensure consistency. There are many ways to customize heading styles in Word. In this article, we will modify heading styles using the Styles task pane.

The Styles task pane appears with styles in the document (you can change this display by clicking Options at the bottom of the task pane):

To modify or customize a heading style:

1. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon.
2. Click the dialog box launcher (diagonal arrow) on the bottom right in the Styles group. You can also press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S. The Styles task pane will appear. If the task pane is floating, double-click the title bar.
3. Click in a paragraph using the style you want to modify.
4. Click the arrow to the right of the heading you want to modify in the Styles task pane and then select Modify from the drop-down menu. You can also right-click the heading style in the task pane and select Modify. A dialog box appears.
5. In the Modify Style dialog box, select the desired options such as font, font size, font color, alignment, and line spacing. Buttons in this dialog box are comparable to those in the Ribbon.
6. If you want to change some other formatting options (such as paragraph formats), select Format at the bottom of the dialog box and select other options from the drop-down menu.
7. Select Only in this document so that the style is modified in the current document only.
8. Do not select Automatically Update unless you want the document styles to update when a user changes heading formatting in the document. It’s typically best to leave this option unchecked.
9. Click OK or press Enter. The entire document will change unless a heading has been manually formatted (which overrides the style). You can simply reapply the style if this occurs.

The Modify Styles dialog box displays the style name, the type of style and options for modifying the style:

When you save the document, the modified styles are also saved.

Styles are the most important formatting feature in Word to automate formatting in longer documents. Heading styles also have the added benefit of creating structured documents and are integrated with several other Word features such as generated tables of contents.

This article was first published on May 15, 2021 and has been updated for clarity and content.

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Introduction

Headers and footers

Headers and footers can help keep longer documents organized and make them easier to read. Text entered in the header or footer will appear on each page of the document.

To insert a header or footer:

1. Select the Insert tab.
2. Click either the Header or Footer command. A drop-down menu will appear.
3. From the drop-down menu, select Blank to insert a blank header or footer, or choose one of the built-in options.

   Inserting a header

4. The Design tab will appear on the Ribbon, and the header or footer will appear in the document.
5. Type the desired information into the header or footer.

   Typing text into a header

6. When you’re finished, click Close Header and Footer in the Design tab, or hit the Esc key.

After you close the header or footer, it will still be visible, but it will be locked. To edit it again, just double-click anywhere on the header or footer, and it will become unlocked.

To insert the date or time into a header or footer:

1. Double-click anywhere on the header or footer to unlock it. The Design tab will appear.
2. From the Design tab, click the Date & Time command.

   The Date & Time command

3. Select a date format in the dialog box that appears.

   Selecting a date format

4. Place a check mark in the Update Automatically box if you would like it to always reflect the current date. Otherwise, it will not change when the document is opened at a later date.
5. Click OK. The date and time now appears in the document.

To remove content controls:

By default, some of the built-in headers and footers have snippets of text that are called content controls. Content controls can contain information such as the document title or company name, and they allow you to enter this information into a form field.

Form fields

However, you’ll often just want to type a normal header without any content controls. To do this, you’ll need to remove any content control fields from the header or footer.

1. With the header or footer section active, right-click the content control field you want to remove. A drop-down menu will appear.
2. Click Remove Content Control. The content control field will disappear.

   Removing Content Control

Other header and footer options

There are many other header and footer options you can use to design these sections of your document. You can review the Header & Footer Tools Design tab to view and explore these options.

The Design Tab

Adding page numbers

Word can automatically label each page with a page number and place it in a header, footer, or side margin. You can add page numbers to an existing header or footer, or you can insert page numbers into a new header or footer.

To add page numbers to an existing header or footer:

1. Select the header or footer. The Design tab will appear.
2. Place the insertion point where you want the page number to be. You can place it anywhere except inside a content control field.

   The insertion point

3. From the Design tab, select the Page Number command.
4. Click Current Position, then select the desired style. The page number will appear in the document.

   Selecting a page number

If you’ve already typed information into your header or footer, it’s important to place the page number at the Current Position to avoid losing anything. If you select a page number from Top of Page or Bottom of Page, it will delete anything you’ve already added to the header or footer.

To insert page numbers into a new header or footer:

1. From the Insert tab, click Page Number. A drop-down menu will appear.
2. Select the desired page number style, and it will appear in your document.

   Inserting a page number at the top of the page

To hide the page number on the first page:

In some documents, you may not want the first page to show the page number. You can hide the first page number without affecting the rest of the pages.

1. Select the header or footer that contains the page number.
2. From the Design tab, place a check mark next to Different First Page. The header and footer will disappear from the first page. If you want, you can type something new in the header or footer, and it will only affect the first page.

   Hiding the page number on the first page

If you’re unable to select Different First Page, it may be because an object within the header or footer is selected. Click in an empty area within the header or footer to make sure nothing is selected.

To format page numbers:

1. Select the header or footer that contains the page number.
2. From the Design tab, select the Page Number command.
3. Click Format Page Numbers.

   Clicking Format Page Numbers

4. From the dialog box, select the desired Number format.

   Selecting a number format

5. Next to Start at, enter the number you want the page numbers to start with.

   Selecting a starting page number

If you’ve created a page number in the side margin, it’s still considered part of the header or footer. You won’t be able to select the page number unless the header or footer is selected.

An alternative way to modify your page numbering is by using section breaks. To learn how to do this, read our article on Modifying Page Numbers in Word.

Challenge!

1. Create a new Word document.
2. Create a blank header.
3. Add your name in the header of a document.
4. Right-align the text in the header.
5. Select a built-in footer.

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