Headers and footers are particularly useful for documents that require several pages to print. The header is information printed at the top of each page; the footer at the bottom of each page. There are two ways of working with headers and footers in Excel. Both are found in the Page Layout Tab Of the Excel Ribbon. When working in Normal mode, you can access headers and footers by clicking on the Launch button in the Page Setup section. Here, in the Header/Footer tab, you gain access to all of Excel features relating to headers and footers.

As you choose these options, you can click on the Print Preview button at any time and then, to return to Headers/Footers, click on Page Setup. This method of editing headers and footers is particularly useful if you're working on a fairly small screen.

The second method requires you to be in Page Layout mode: to switch to Page Layout mode, simply click on the Page Layout icon on the right of the Status Bar. You can now gain direct access to the header and footer areas of the page. Simply follow the prompt that reads "Click to Add Header". As soon as you activate the header or footer area, "Header & Footer Tools" appears on your ribbon. This consists of the context sensitive "Design" Tab. (A context sensitive Tab is one which only appears in certain contexts.)

Apart from their position on the page, Excel treats headers and footers as identical. Each consists of three sections: left, centre and right. In each of these sections, you can insert a wide range of information. This is done by clicking on the buttons in the "Header And Footer Elements" section of the "Design" Tab. For example, at the bottom of the page, you might want to insert the date, the page number, "Page 1 of 4", etc. To do this, you would simply activate the footer area, type the word "Page" followed by a space, then click on the page number icon which will generate the page number. Then type " of " and finally click on the "Number Of Pages" button.

Other items which can be inserted automatically include "File Path", as in "c:\Excel Work\myfile.xlsx"; "File Name", as in "myfile.xlsx"; and pictures, for example, your company logo. To insert a picture, click on the picture button and then double click on the picture to insert it, just as you would in any other region of the page. You can then resize the picture as necessary or increase/decrease the space available for the header/footer.