Forum Discussion
Footer Template Not Updating
I have 14 documents that need to have the same footer. This footer consists of three hyperlinks and a page number. When updates need to be made to one, all documents need to be updated.
To do this, I created a footer template by selecting everything in the footer and then Save Selection to Footer Gallery. I then went to another document and was able to successfully add that footer. However, when I make a footer update (i.e. link or text change) on one of the documents, it doesn't update to the other 13. I tried selecting everything again and then Save Selection to Footer Gallery with the same name to overwrite it but the footer doesn't update where I've already added it. If I delete what was there and readd the footer, the updates will appear but it does not make sense to do that 13 different times. What am I doing wrong?
1 Reply
Try fix by the following:
- Use a Master Template for Future Documents
- Create a Word template (.dotx) with your footer.
- Base all new documents on this template. Any footer changes require updating the template and creating new documents from it.
- Batch Update Existing Documents
- For your current 14 documents, you need a batch process to replace the footer in all of them at once.
- Batch tools: Software like "Batch Change Word Header and Footer" can replace footers in multiple documents simultaneously, saving significant time.
- VBA Macro: If you are comfortable with macros, you can use or adapt a VBA script to open each document, replace the footer content, and save the changes.
- Consider AutoText Fields in a Global Template
- Store your footer as an AutoText entry in a global template. This approach is more advanced and works best if all users have access to the same global template, but it still requires reinserting the footer to update existing documents.
