how to create a custom footer in excel

Header and Footer is the top and bottom portion of a document respectively, similarly excel also has options for headers and footers, they are available in the insert tab in the text section, using this features provides us with two different spaces in the worksheet one on the top and one on the bottom.

A header in excel: It is a section of the worksheet that appears at the top of each of the pages in the excel sheet or document. This remains constant across all the pages. It can contain information such as Page No., Date, Title or Chapter Name, etc.

Footer in Excel: It is a section of the worksheet that appears at the bottom of each of the pages in the excel sheet or document. This remains constant across all the pages. It can contain information such as Page No., Date, Title or Chapter Name, etc.

The purpose of Header and Footer in Excel

The purpose is similar to that of hard copy documents or books. The Headers and Footers in Excel help meet the standard representation format of the documents and/or worksheets. They add a sense of organization to the soft documents and/or worksheets.

Header & Footer Tools in Excel

As we can see in the screenshot above, there are 4 sections under Header & Footer Tools, namely Header & Footer, Header & Footer Elements, Navigation, and Options. This particular Toolbox appears after clicking Insert-> Header & Footer.

Header & Footer – This shows a list of the quick options to be used as a header or footer.
Header & Footer Elements – This has a set of options for the text to be used as a header or footer such as Page Number, File Name, Number of Pages, etc.
Navigation – It has 2 options, i.e., Go to Header and Go to Footer, which navigates the cursor to the respective area.
Options – It has 2 options related to conditionally put up of the header and footer, i.e., Different on the first page and Different on Odd & Even page. The other 2 options are regarding the formatting of the excel Formatting is a useful feature in Excel that allows you to change the appearance of the data in a worksheet. Formatting can be done in a variety of ways. For example, we can use the styles and format tab on the home tab to change the font of a cell or a table. read more page. One is to scale the header/footer with the document. The other is to align the header/footer with page margins.

Following are the steps for creating header in excel –

Click the worksheet where you want to add or change the header then, Go to Insert tab -Text group – Header Footer.
Clicking on it would open a new window, as shown below.
As shown in the screenshot given below, Header Footer Tools has Design Tab, which contains various text options to put as the header. The default one is an empty text box wherein you can enter a free text, e.g., 'This is the header text.' The other options are Page Number, Number of Pages, Current Date, Current Time, File Path, File Name, Sheet Name, Picture, etc.

Click the worksheet where you want to add or change the header then, Go to Insert tab -> Text group -> Header & Footer.

Clicking on it would open a new window, as shown. As shown in the screenshot given below, Header & Footer Tools has Design Tab, which contains various text options to put as the header. The default one is an empty text box wherein you can enter a free text, e.g., 'This is the Footer text.' The other options are Page Number, Number of Pages, Current Date, Current Time, File Path, File Name, Sheet Name, Picture, etc.

How to Remove Header and Footer in Excel?

As shown, launch the Page Setup dialog box from the Page Setup box under the Page Layout menu.

Goto Header/Footer section.

As shown, select 'none' for Header and/or Footer so as to remove the respective feature.

How to Put Custom Text in Excel Header?

In the following example, 'This is the header text' is the custom text entered in the Header box. The same will reflect on all the pages in the worksheet.

The Header Text Editor can be closed by pressing the Escape key on the keyboard.

How to Assign Page Number in Excel Footer Text?

As shown in the figure, a page number can be entered as the footer text. Refer to the screenshot below to understand the same.

In the following example, 'Page [&page] Of [&page]' is the text entered in the Footer box. Here, the &page is a dynamic parameter and evaluated to the page number. The first parameter is the current page number, and the second is the total number of pages. The same will reflect on all the pages in the worksheet.

To give page Numbers to a sheet, Click on a sheet, then go to Footer and Click on the Design tab under Header & Footer Tools, and then select Page Number.

After Selecting Page Numbers, it will Displays as &[Page]Of as shown in the below screenshot.

To show page numbers with Total Numbers of Pages, click on the number of pages under the design tab in the Header & Footer tool.

After Selecting Number of Pages, it will add &[Pages] with &[Page]Of.

Then it shows Page Number with Number of Pages.

The Footer Text Editor can be closed by pressing the Escape key on the keyboard.

Note: In addition to the above-explained examples, the other options for Header/Footer text that are made available by MS Excel are Date, Time, File Name, Sheet Name, etc.

Things to Remember

Headers and footers in Excel help meet the standard representation format of the documents or worksheets.
They add a sense of organization to the soft documents.
Excel offers a variety of options to be put up as Header/Footer text such as Date, Time, Sheet Name, File Name, Page Number, Custom Text, etc.