Where did my header and footer go?

Word users are often puzzled by the sudden disappearance of headers and footers in their documents in Print Layout view. Instead of seeing the usual space between pages, they find that their document text is continuous, with only a solid line marking the page break, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. No space between pages

Users may also describe this problem as a change in the vertical ruler (no blue area at the top) or even in the page size, saying that their page is only 9″ high or that the text area “starts right at the top of the page.”

The “white space” option

The reason for all these phenomena is a new feature added in Word 2002 that allows users to hide the “white space” between pages. This option may be toggled in Word’s Options as follows:

• Word 2002 and 2003: The check box for displaying “white space between pages” is on the View tab of Tools | Options, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. View tab of Options dialog showing “white space” option

• Word 2007: The check box for “Show white space between pages in Print Layout view” is at Office Button | Word Options | Display: Page display options.

Figure 3. “White space” option in Word 2007

• Word 2010 and above: The check box for “Show white space between pages in Print Layout view” is at File | Options | Display: Page display options.

Figure 4. “White space” option in Word 2010

A quick shortcut

An alternative (and much quicker) way to return to the usual view is to hover the mouse over the line between pages until the mouse pointer changes to a double arrow and the “Show White Space” ScreenTip is displayed.

• Word 2002 and 2003: When this option was introduced, a single click sufficed, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. In Word 2002 or 2003, click when you see this mouse pointer to restore your header and footer.

If you now hover your mouse over the space between pages, you will see the “Hide White Space” pointer and ScreenTip (see Figure 6). If you click now, you'll be back where you started (and that's probably how you got there).

Figure 6. Click now to hide white space

• Word 2007 and above: Because it was so easy to hide the white space by accident, it was suggested to Microsoft that perhaps changing the shortcut to Ctrl+click would help. Instead, Microsoft opted for a double-click, so the ScreenTips for showing and hiding the white space are now as shown in Figures 7 and 8.

Figure 7. “Show White Space” ScreenTip in Word 2010

Figure 8. “Hide White Space” ScreenTip in Word 2010

Even with this change, users still manage to do this by accident, so many of them find this option very annoying. But it can be very useful when you want to read text continuously (as you can do in Normal view) but still take advantage of the more WYSIWYG Print Layout view, which can show footnotes, graphics, columns, and other complex layout in place.

Two important points about this setting:

1. When white space is hidden, the setting affects not just the “white space between pages,” as described in the Options, but anything that is part of the header or footer, including watermarks and other graphics (including text boxes) anchored to the header or footer. If you have created complex letterhead with text boxes in the margin, this can cause a good bit of your document to disappear, which can be very disconcerting the first time you experience it!

2. Whether white space is hidden or displayed can be very puzzling and appear capricious, but in fact the display status follows very definite rules, which are laid out in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article “Description of the ‘White space between pages’ option in Word’” (although this article was written for Word 2002 and 2003, there doesn’t appear to be an updated article for later versions, and the content of this article is still applicable for those later versions).

This article copyright © 2004, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2018 by Suzanne S. Barnhill.