Word: Quickly moving between headers and footers

Scenario

You have a long document, or a large one filled with lots of big images, a mix of landscape and portrait pages, lots of section breaks, etc. You need to do stuff in the headers and footers (add/remove text, shift tabs, insert page numbers, adjust page margins etc.), but skipping from one header/footer to the next takes longer than you’d expected.

Solution

Hide the main document while you’re working in the headers/footers. You should find that you can skip between them really quickly once you do that. Turn on the document display after you’ve finished making your header/footer changes.

Here’s how:

Word 2003

1. Double-click in the header or footer to open it and display the Header Footer toolbar.
   

   Word 2003 Header Footer toolbar

2. Click the Show/Hide Document Text icon to hide the main body of the document from view.
   

   Show/Hide Document Text icon

3. Use the ’skip’ and ’switch’ icons to move backwards and forwards through the headers and footers, and to quickly switch from a section’s header to its footer and back again.
   

   Skip and switch icons

4. When you’ve finished making your changes to the headers/footers, click the Show/Hide Document Text icon again, then return to your main document.

Word 2007

1. Double-click in the header or footer to open it and display the Header Footer Tools > Design tab.
   

   Word 2007: Header Footer Tools > Design tab

2. In the Options group, clear the Show Document Text check box icon to hide the main body of the document from view.
3. Use the Navigation group icons to move backwards and forwards through the headers and footers, and to quickly switch from a section’s header to its footer and back again.
4. When you’ve finished making your changes to the headers/footers, select the Show Document Text check box, then click the Close Header and Footer icon to return to your main document.

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