Tracy van der Schyff

#Office365Challenge – “Adding a header or footer to a document brings a smidgen of professionalism to your Word 2013 written creations and helps keep things organized.” I couldn’t have said it better, thanks Dummies.com. Also learnt a new word “Smidgen” – LOVE it. Keep in mind my mother tongue is Afrikaans – so the ability to be eloquent in English, is something I’m passionate about. See my post about the Dying Art of Eloquence.

Headers appear at the top of your documents and footers at the bottom. What goes where is a personal choice – but I normally stick to Document Names in the header, and dates, authors, versions and page numbers in the footer.

To insert a Header or Footer, click on the Insert Tab (1), you’ll see the options under Headers and Footers Grouping (2):

When selecting either Header or Footer, you’ll need to choose the style you would like to use. This will dictate the look, as well as how many fields it will allow:

Once the Header and Footer is inserted, the Design Tab will open, allowing you to format and add fields. I’ve inserted the document name, as well as a banner in the Header, which will be repeated across all pages:

On the footer, there’s a couple of fields I want to discuss. The first is the date and time. And this comes with a story. Years ago I was at a SharePoint Bootcamp and overheard a developer talk about a solution he/she wrote for a company. He mentioned ISO (International Standards for Compliance), and I was immediately interested. So the company had received a Major Non-conformance in their yearly Audit. Templates were being printed as master copies for their factories (the guys will then make copies of this for use). The problem was – even though the version appeared on the document (referencing it back to SharePoint and the library where it was controlled), the auditor could not determine when that master copy was printed – how old it was.

The developer / company then proceeded to develop a solution which would add a date stamp to every document that was printed from SharePoint. If only they knew that Office already catered for this. By adding a field on the footer of all templates “Printed: [Today]”, this expense could have been avoided. Tricky I know – as Office / SharePoint is SO BIG and AMAZING – there is no way you can ever know everything. It is important though to learn the basics about the products you work with.

So let’s insert the date and time, as mentioned you can use the formula [Today], which will when opened, update to today’s date. I typed “Printed:” and next to it (1), on the cursor insert, clicked on the Design Tab (2), Date and Time (3), selected the format (4), chose “Update Automatically” (5) and clicked OK (6) to Insert.

The next type of field I would like to use – is Document Info. I’ve typed “Author” on the document, and next to it (1), on the cursor insert, clicked on the Design Tab (2), Document Info (3), selected the Document Property (4), Author (5): This will display the Author of the document:

I’ve also added the Page Number, and this is the end result (have a look at the other options on the ribbon and experiment = learn:

Header:

Footer:

If this doesn’t rock your socks off when it comes to Word – I’ll have to try harder!

Overview of my challenge: As an absolute lover of all things Microsoft, I’ve decided to undertake the challenge, of writing a blog every single day, for the next 365 days. Crazy, I know. And I’ll try my best, but if I cannot find something good to say about Office 365 and the Tools it includes for 365 days, I’m changing my profession. So let’s write this epic tale of “Around the Office in 365 Days”. My ode to Microsoft Office 365.

Keep in mind that these tips and tricks do not only apply to Office 365 – but where applicable, to the overall Microsoft Office Suite and SharePoint.