Microsoft Word is the most popularly used document creator and editor as it contains almost every tool to create an effective document. Starting from the options available for different templates respective to the events, to the font styles, editing tools to insert shapes, pictures, clipart, modify the layout, etc. Word has proven to be the best one-stop solution for all writers out there.
One such feature that Word offers are the header and footer for the document pages. Whether you want to create a professional submission or a soulful novel, you would need to use this tool to add information about each page.
The header is the top margin of the document page whereas the footer is the bottom margin. Both are used to insert details the following details on each page:
- The date
- The title of the document
- Creator’s name
- Page number
- Section break
If you are a professional user of Microsoft Word then you would understand the importance as well as the usefulness of these features in creating and aligning documents with several pages.
Even though the header and footer are provided by default when you open a new Word document, if you don’t need them, you can easily disable the features. In this article, we are going to focus mainly on the footer and the steps involved in removing the footer in Word.
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What is the Footer?
Header and Footer of the Microsoft Word can be changed or altered based upon our requirement. The main purpose of the header is to allow the user to add essential information such as the main title on every page of the document by single instruction instead of inserting it manually and aligning it for each page.
The footer can be used to add the name of an author or the name of an organization and page numbers. This is very useful in adhering to the document in the correct sequence, especially to prevent confusion after printing a document with many pages.
In Word, you can find Footers of different types such as:
- Blank
- Blank (In three columns)
- Austin
- Banded
- Facet (Even Page)
- Filigree
- Grid
- Integral
- Ion (Dark) and Ion (Light)
- Motion (Even page) and Motion (Odd page)
- Whisp
All these help in having different Footer styles and slots, for example, the second ‘Blank’ option in the Footer divides the Footer into three equal columns such that you can add three texts at the bottom of your document page instead of just one!
Further, other options enable you to have better control over the overall document structure. Such as:
- Edit Footer
- Get more Footer from Office.com
- Save selection to Footer Gallery
However, not all types of documents need page numbers or other information hence the user can remove the header and footer if required. You can remove the header and footer before printing if they seem to consume extra space!
How to remove Footer in Word?
The steps to remove Footer from all the pages of the document, follow these steps:
For Windows
- Go to the Insert tab located on the Ribbon at the top of your document.
- From the columns, search for the ‘Header & Footer’ column.
- Click on the ‘Footer’ button to option the options.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the options list and click on the ‘Remove Footer’ option.
If you have inserted Footer to different sections in your document then follow and repeat the same steps for each section. Follow the same steps for the macOS (latest versions).
In case you are using earlier versions, try finding the ‘Header and Footer’ menu under the Layout Tab of the Word.
Read about: Inserting, Removing & Modifying Page Border In MS Word
If you want to remove only the Footer of the first page, follow these steps:
- Double-click on the Footer at the bottom of your first page. You can also access the ‘Edit Footer’ options by right-clicking on the footer.
- From the Design panel of Header & Footer, click on the ‘Different First Page’ option.
- Click on the ‘Close Header and Footer’ to close the panel.
- You can use the other editing options such as space or length occupied by the header and the footer for each page.
This will remove the header or footer from the first page alone and keep the rest of the document the same.
Another alternative to removing the Footer is by using the Document Inspector tab. For this method, follow these steps:
- In your Word document, open the ‘File’ menu from the Ribbon at the top of your document.
- From the ‘Info pane’ scroll down and click on the ‘Check for issues’ tab.
- A drop-down menu will be displayed from which you should click on the ‘Inspect Document’ option.
- This will open the Document Inspector dialog box.
- From the list, uncheck every option except the ‘Header, Footers and Watermark’ option and click on the ‘Inspect’ option.
- Now the next dialog box with the ‘Remove all’ option will be displayed against the ‘Headers, Footers and Watermark’, as a confirmation step.
- Click on the ‘Close’ option to save the changes or you can move to the previous step by clicking on the ‘Reinspect’ option at the bottom of the dialog box.
This method is extremely useful to remove the header and footer throughout the document irrespective of being split into several sections as in the earlier explained method, you have to repeat the removal process for each section of the document.
If you are comfortable in using codes then unlike these methods you can use the VBA code to remove all various headers and footers in the document. This is a bit technical and is not commonly used but let us know how to use this alternative:
- Open your Word document and press ALT + F11 keys. This will open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
- Click on the ‘Insert’ option.
- Click on the ‘Module’ option and paste the module to remove all the headers and footers from the document. You can get the module from here.
- Finally, use the F5 key to delete or remove all the headers and footers in the document.
Also, read about: 5 Ways To Convert Word Document Into JPEG
Hope this article was useful for you to understand everything about Footer in Word and the ways to modify and remove them.
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