Creating a Footer

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 10, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


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

  1. Select Page Setup from the File menu. Word 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.

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

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

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

  5. 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 footer.
  6. When you are through defining your footer, click on OK to close the Footer dialog box.
  7. Click on OK to close the Page Setup dialog box.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2694) 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. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Setting a VBA Variable From a Bookmark

Bookmarks are quite helpful in a document. You may want to transfer the contents of a bookmark into a macro variable in ...

Discover More

Retaining Formatting After a Paste Multiply

You can use the Paste Special feature in Excel to multiple the values in a range of cells. If you don't want Excel to ...

Discover More

Printing a Screen without the Print Screen Key

The Print Screen key is a handy way to grab a screen shot. What if your keyboard doesn't physically have such a key, ...

Discover More

Excel Smarts for Beginners! Featuring the friendly and trusted For Dummies style, this popular guide shows beginners how to get up and running with Excel while also helping more experienced users get comfortable with the newest features. Check out Excel 2019 For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Dynamic Headers and Footers

Do you want to change the headers and footers that appear on different pages of your printout? Here's how you can get ...

Discover More

First and Last Names in a Page Header

When you have a worksheet that includes a long list of names, you may want the first and last names on each page to ...

Discover More

Specifying Date Formats in Headers

Don't like the default date format used by Excel when you place the date in a header or footer? You can use a macro to ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is one more than 3?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.