MS Word - Footers

[John]

Yellow! :hearty

I'm in the middle of writing a report, is there a way I can have a different footer for certain parts? What I would like is this:

Front cover - no footer

Pre-body - Roman numerals:
Abstract - i
Acknowledgements - ii
Table of contents - iii

Body - normal numbers:
Introduction - page 1... next page - page 2... etc.

I've searched Google for examples but none of them seem to work.

Any help much appreciated. Thanks. :)

[TheOldhamWhisper]

You might be able to do it by using the 'View' menu to bring up the header/footer toolbar and doing each section manually but that sort of defeats the object. If you are going to do that, it would be quicker to just type it in yourself.

[GlosRFC]

Pretty easy John...what you have to do is create Section Breaks using Insert, Break...then choose Next Page from the section break types.

From your example you will need three sections. So create your front page and don't enter a footer. At the bottom of that page, insert a section break and then create your new footer. Again, insert a section break before the main body and create a different footer.

You can, if you wish, change the orientation of the pages within the breaks too, for example if you had a table that you can only produce in landscape format but you want the rest of the document to be in portrait.

Also, the footer isn't the right place to create a table of contents. It's far easier if, when you're on that second section, you select Insert, Reference, Index and Tables then select the Table of Contents option. That way (providing you've used different styles for your headings) you can always update the TOC automatically by right-clicking inside it and selecting the Update Field option.

[GlosRFC]

Just found this tutorial that is almost identical to what you want to achieve
http://addbalance.com/usersguide/sections.htm

It also points out what I forgot to say above which is to make sure that you deselect the Same as Previous option on the new footers you create, otherwise they'll all look the same!

If it's a struggle, let me know and I'll format your report up for you.

[John]

That's brilliant Glos - many thanks! Didn't work first time and took a high degree of fiddling, but got there eventually.

[GlosRFC]

Yes, it can be a bit fiddly at first - it usually pays to give some thought to the layout of the document before you type a single word. But, once you've grasped the concept of section breaks, it's pretty easy to layout a quite complicated document. I always find it helps if I turn on the standard (rather than the print) view so that you can see where all the breaks occur. Another useful tip is to turn on special character marks, e.g. paragraph marks, which you can find in the Word Options. Can't remember where off the top of my head but it's probably in the View tab - look for something like Show Special Characters and tick that option. Even though you can see them, they won't actually be printed but it helps to know which paragraph you're in before you insert a section break.

Finally, another tip about the table of contents. In Word, you can insert hyperlinks. Usually these are links to the web but you can create local links within the document by adding anchor points to each of the headings that appear in the TOC. Once they've been added, go back to the TOC and add a hyperlink that references these anchors on each appropriate line. Anyone that subsequently views your document can then jump straight to the relevant paragraph simply by clicking on the link in the TOC.

[mathare]

And use cross-references too.

Rather than saying "...as shown in Figure 2-1..." make sure Figure 2-1 is using a proper caption (Insert -> Caption) and then you can use Insert -> Cross-reference to make the reference in the text a hyperlink so anyone clicking on the "Figure 2-1" reference in the text will be taken directly to the figure in question. You can use this for sections and chapter references as well. And because they are fields they can be updated easier if you reorder the document than having to search through all the text and manually update your references

[John]

Yep, cheers folks. :) Already use cross-references as some of the reports I write are quite long, and I hate having to scroll up and down to find a particular part I want to reference. Not used the paragraphs thing Glos but I'll give it a whirl.