MS Word - different header footer on pages

March 13, 2023
DD Planet

At times it is required to keep a different header and different footer on the odd and even pages, for example, while writing a book.

Here are some quick tips to achieve the same in MS Word:

1. Go to ‘page setup’. You can reach here from ‘Tell Me what you want to do’
2. Go to ‘Layout’ tab
3. Click 'Different odd and even for header/ footer'
4. In the option ‘From Edge’: specify the header and footer size, for example, header could be 0.5 inch and footer 0.4 inch
5. If you don’t want a footer, you can keep it so
6. In the case of a book, you can specify the author’s name on the left page in Header and the book’s name on the right page
7. From the ‘Margins’ tab, you can specify the required margins from the top, left, right and bottom as well as the gutter margin for the book
8. Pressing "Enter" after the text in Header or Footer increases the length of the header/ footer size. If done by mistake - click below the text inside header/ footer and press the "Delete" key
9. If looking for a different header and footer for different sections such as the Introduction part and the Main section of the book, insert a ‘Section Break’ choosing it from ‘Tell Me what you want to do’ OR from the Insert tab and select “Next Page” in the Section type
10. On the Next page click the “Header Footer” area, and click “Link to previous” to break the link of header/ footer to the previous section. You may have to do it for the first and second page of the next section