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Word 2007 Practice: Create a Custom Footer and Save it as a Building Block

This practice exercise will take you through the steps of making a custom footer (or header)and saving it as a building block in Word. There will be two distinct tasks accomplished: creating the footer and saving it as a building block. Creating the footer will go through where to find specific codes to use. Any part of a Word document that you would use repeatedly could be saved as a building block.

Create the Document

1. Type =rand(16,4), then push Enter to create a quick document of 16 paragraphs with 4 sentences in each.
2. Press Ctrl + A to select all the text.
3. In the Home tab, go to the Paragraph group and click the Paragraph box button. In the Paragraph box, change the Indentation, Special box to First line and the Spacing, After to 12pt. This will indent the first line of and add space between every paragraph.




4. Now to make space to add a title at the beginning of the document: push Ctrl + Home to go to the beginning of the document. Enter one time, then use the up arrow to move to the blank top line. Click the Clear Formatting button (in the Home tab, Font group) to remove the indent and line spacing.



5. You’re going to add a Document Property for the Title, which will automatically show the title in the footer. In the Insert tab, go to the Text group, click Quick Parts, then Document Properties, then Title. To add text to the title, single-click and type (Call it Testing Doc or whatever you like).
6. Format the title: push Ctrl + E to center. You can increase the font size by pushing Ctrl + ] a few times. In the Home tab, Paragraph group, click the Line Spacing button, then Add Space After Paragraph.

Steps to Create the Footer

1. From anywhere in the document, click the Insert tab, and in the Header & Footer group click Footer, and in the Gallery list choose Blank.
   Note: Notice that there is now a Header & Footer Tools button at the very top of the Word window, with a Design button directly underneath. This is called an On Demand tab and should hold every option needed to modify the footer.



2. The light blue horizontal line indicates that you are in the footer area of the document. Click the [Type text] and in the Design tab, go to the Insert group and click Quick Parts, then choose Document Property (also called Content Controls). Choose Title from the list.
   Note: this will automatically update from the Title Document Property you added at the top of the document.
3. Push the right arrow key to get out of the Title box, then Tab once to go to the center. In the Design tab, in the Insert group, click Date & Time. Notice the Update Automatically check box, check that if you want the date you insert to always show the current date. Choose whatever date format you like, double-click it to insert it.
4. Now tab once to move to right side of the footer. The page numbering will go here, and we are going to create a 1/3 (1 = current page, 3 = total pages)number.
5. Go to Insert group, click Quick Parts, then click Field.
6. In the Field box, change the Categories: to Numbering and under Field Names: choose Page, then OK. This inserts just the current page number in to the document.
7. Type a / (slash).
8. Go back and open the Field box again, in the Categories: to Document Information and under Field Names: choose NumPages, then OK. This will put in the total number of pages in the document, and update it if it increases or decreases.

Check Your Work

Double-click on your main document to leave the footer area. Scroll through the document or zoom out to see the footer on every page. Notice how the page numbering changes on every page, and would continue to update to include any new pages you might add to the document. Push Ctrl + End to go to the end of the document, then push Ctrl + Enter to start a new page. Did the total page numbers change? Try changing the document Title, does the title in the footer change?

Steps to Save the Footer to the Footer Gallery

1. Double-click the footer area to activate it.
2. Push Ctrl + A to select everything in the footer.



3. In the Header & Footer group, click Footer, then choose Save Selection to Footer Gallery.
4. You would typically want to change the name to something more meaningful, for this practice, just call it Practice footer or whatever you like. Click OK to finish.
5. Test it: start a New Word document (Ctrl + N) and insert the footer you just make. Go to the Insert tab, Headers & Footers group, click Footer, and choose yours from the list.
   Note: you would need to add a title to the document using the Document Properties for the Title in the footer to display the title text.
6. When you exit Word, it will display a message about You have modified styles, building blocks… click Yes to save the footer as part of the Building Blocks.

You created a custom footer using Document Properties and field codes, and saved it as a Building Block to use later. I hope you learned something new!

Tips

• To remove a header or footer from a document, go to the Insert tab, Header & Footer group. Click either Header or Footer, at the bottom of the Gallery list is a Remove option.
• If you start the name of the Building Block part (like the footer) with punctuation, it will appear closer to the top of its Gallery list.
• To delete Building Blocks, go to the Insert tab, in the Text group click Quick Parts then Building Blocks Organizer. Click the Building Block to delete in the list, use the Delete button to delete.

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