Adding Headers and Footers to Excel Worksheets

This video guide shows how to insert a header or footer in Excel by selecting Header & Footer in the Text section of the Insert ribbon. Adding a header or footer in this manner puts Excel into Page Layout view on the View ribbon and you may will probably want to put it back in Normal View when complete.

Although the video shows you how to insert dynamic page numbers or dates, you can also type text directly into the three header and footer regions. You can then edit the font's appearance through the Home ribbon or the cursor selection menu as you would when working within the main grid of cells.

You can also add headers and footers is through the Page Setup menu on the Page Layout sheet. This lets you access all the same options but it is inferior as it often requires more clicks and cannot give you the same instant feedback as to how the newly installed header or footer will look, and whether it will overlap with the data in the spreadsheet proper.

As well as adding a header and footer to an individual spreadsheet, it is possible to save an Excel template of a blank spreadsheet with a company logo and address appropriately positioned in the header and footer. As the Excel header and footer is almost identical to a three column Word header and footer, it is possible to standardise the look and feel of documents produced by the different Office products.