How to Put Headers on One Page Only

Working with headers and footers in Microsoft Word isn't as simple as you might want it to be. When you add a header or footer to a document, that same text automatically becomes the header or footer for every page in the whole document. However, if you want to put the Word header on the first page only or on one specific page within the document, you can do it. Either you use a built-in tool to give a unique header to the first page or break the document into sections and assign a unique header to each section.

Creating a header or footer for an entire document in Word is easy. All you have to do is double-click at either the extreme top of the page or the extreme bottom to open the header or footer section so you can type any text you like. Alternatively, navigate to the "Insert" tab and then choose "Header" or "Footer" from the "Header & Footer" section. When you open the header or footer this way, you have a choice of different styles of headers and footers to choose from. Access these same options using the double-click method to choose "Header" or "Footer" from the "Design" tab which opens up automatically.

Type the content for the header and footer and then click elsewhere on the page or click the red "x" icon for "Close Header and Footer" in the "Design" tab.

Putting a header on one page only is especially easy if it's the first page. When you open the header or footer section, the "Design" tab that opens has an option called "Different First Page" located in the "Options" section of the ribbon menu. Click the check box beside it and enter the header for your first page in the usual way. This only adds the header (or footer) to the first page, leaving the rest of the document blank. You can add a different header for the rest of the pages or leave them blank.

If you want a header on one page only but not the first page, the process is a little more complicated. You do this using section breaks. You make the page in question its own section, and then it can have its own header. Add section breaks before and after the page to achieve this.

On your document, make sure your cursor is on the page before the one you want to have a unique header. Go to the "Page Layout" tab and under "Page Setup," click "Breaks." Under "Section Breaks," choose "Next Page." This sets up a section break at the end of the current page, so a new section starts on the next page. Navigate to the next page and do the same thing. Put a section break at the end of the page.

Use one of the methods for applying a header to the entire document to apply a header to the new section. It is automatically applied to the whole document, but you can change this. Select the header so you can type in it. In the "Navigation" section of the "Design" tab, you'll see that "Link to Previous" is highlighted. Click this to unhighlight it. This breaks the link between the header on the page and the previous header so that they can display different text. You may need to do this on the page after the one you want to have the header, too.

Use this method to set up multiple different headers in Word or to have a header on one page only. If you want a header for one page, you need to delete the header from the previous page – open the section and delete the text – and possibly from the page afterward as well.