Creating a Header

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 18, 2022)

Excel allows you to add headers to your spreadsheet. Headers are nothing more than repeating text that appears at the top of every page of your printed spreadsheet. The beauty of headers is that they only have to be defined once, and then Excel places them on your printed pages automatically. To define a page header, do the following:

  1. Select Page Setup from the File menu. This displays the Page Setup dialog box.
  2. Make sure the Header/Footer tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)

    3. Figure 1. The Header/Footer tab of the Page Setup dialog box.

  3. Using the Header drop-down list, select any of the predefined headers you want used with your spreadsheet.
  4. Click on OK to close the Page Setup dialog box.

If you don't like any of the predefined headers in Excel, or if you have special header needs, you can create a custom header. You do that by following these steps:

  1. Select Page Setup from the File menu. This displays the Page Setup dialog box.
  2. Make sure the Header/Footer tab is selected.
  3. Click on the Custom Header button. This displays the Header dialog box. (See Figure 2.)

    4. Figure 2. The Header dialog box.

  4. In each of the three parts of the dialog box, enter the information you want to appear at the left, center, and right of the header.
  5. When you are through defining your footer, click on OK to close the Header dialog box.
  6. Click on OK to close the Page Setup dialog box.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2692) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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