Section 33. About Headers and Footers

33. About Headers and Footers

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

14 Set Up Page Formatting

16 About Styles and Templates

SEE ALSO

34 Add a Header or Footer

Headers and footers can give your documents a consistent appearance. You can put both a header and a footer on a page or use one or the other. You can select certain pages to receive headers and footers. Writer also supports the use of odd-and even-numbered headers and footers. For example, you might want a page number to appear in the upper-right corner of the header on odd pages and in the upper-left corner of the header on even pages.

KEY TERMS

Header Text and/or graphics that appear at the top of every page in a section or document.

Footer Text and/or graphics that appear at the bottom of every page in a section or document.

Headers and footers can contain graphics, so you can place your company's logo at the top of every page. Writer also supports the use of fields , such as page numbers, the time, the date, and even chapter numbers . When you insert one of these fields, Writer inserts the actual value in the document. If your document, for example, is 50 pages, the pages will automatically display 1 through 50. If you delete a page from your document, Writer instantly renumbers the pages.

Headers and footers appear on each page of the section or document.

KEY TERM

Fields Placeholders in your documents that OpenOffice.org fills in with actual values, such as page numbers, the time, and date.

As can paragraphs, pages can also have styles. 14 Set Up Page Formatting discusses page styles. You can also use a header or footer that's different from the ones on surrounding pages by setting up a new page style, using the Format, Styles and Formatting, Page Styles list. If you define a new page style anywhere in your document, all pages use the new header or footer until you revert back to the previous page style or switch to a new page style.

TIP

If you write a report that contains several pages of graphical or numerical data, you might want to format a new page style for those pages so they can contain a different header or footer. You might, for example, renumber those pages as Chart-1Chart-2 , and so on.

If you attempt to insert a header or footer onto a page that already has a header or footer, Writer warns you that the other header or footer exists and lets you verify that you want to delete the contents of the existing header or footer before continuing. Writer won't overwrite a header or footer without you verifying that you really want to do so.

Writer won't overwrite an existing header or footer without you verifying that you really want to do so.