Forum Discussion
In Microsoft Word headers, how do I enter content that differs on each page without section breaks?
I am currently finishing up a daily devotional book -- that is, a book that has one page for each day of the year (in this case including February 29th for leap years). I need a header that contains unchanging content (the name of the book), and two predictably variating items: the day of the year, and a running number of days. For example:
Crumbs ~ February 01 / Day 32
Crumbs ~ February 02 / Day 33
I am hoping to find a way to feed a formula into the Word header that will cooperate (even with the February 29th issues). It is important that the header remain consistent in this upward count--even if I move some of the pages back or forth. I also want to avoid including a section break at the end of each page.
Does anyone have any ideas of how to make this work?
1 Reply
Hi JeremyBaj
unfortunately, word doesn’t have a built-in way to do exactly what you want (a unique header on every page that automatically updates without section breaks). By design, headers and footers repeat until you insert a section break. That’s why Word isn’t a great fit for page-by-page variations like your devotional.Here are some workarounds you could try:
- Use fields inside the body text instead of the header
- You can insert fields like PAGE, SEQ (sequence numbers), or even DATE fields into the main document text.
- Then, use formatting so this text looks like a header (smaller font, positioned at the top). This way, each page shows different information, but you’re not relying on the header itself.
- Consider “Different First Page” + Section Breaks (traditional way)
- This is the usual Word method: each section can have its own header. But like you said, that means 366 section breaks for a leap year.
- Work with fields and calculations
- Word fields can do basic calculations. For example, you could use a SEQ field to number your days (Day 32, Day 33, etc.).
- However, automating “February 1 → Day 32” and rolling over into leap years is very tricky inside Word alone, it doesn’t have the same formula power as Excel.
- Alternative tools
- If the project is book-length and needs precise daily headers, you might consider doing the layout in Publisher, InDesign. Those programs give you much more control for repeating structures across hundreds of pages.
- Another option is to generate the daily headers in Excel (dates + day counts) and then mail merge into Word. That way, each page gets the right header without manual section breaks.
- Use fields inside the body text instead of the header
