How to reference titles in the header or footer

How do you repeat the title of each chapter in the header or footer of your document? If dividing the document into sections, unlink them and edit the sections manually one by one is your answer, this little article is worth reading.

If you’ve formatted your document with styles, the solution is not to use sections but the field Stylereference . This is easy and is furthermore an automatic way to create headers or footers which differ from each other in this area.

Suppose the title of each chapter is formatted with the style Heading 1, this is how you do it:

1. Double click in the header or the footer and position your cursor where you want to reference the text
   
2. The contextual tab Header and Footer Tools appears, click on the dropdown menu Quick parts > Field…
   
3. In the dialog box Field, choose Links and References from the list Categories, select StyleRef from the list Field names list and Heading 1 from the list Style name.
   
4. Make sure that the Preserve formatting during updates box is checked and click OK
   
5. The text of heading 1 appears in the header or footer and varies depending on the current chapter.
   

I always start a new chapter on a new page, in this way a chapter never ends and begins on the same page. You can set this by formatting the paragraph of the style > Line and Page Breaks > Page break before.

You can use Styleref for each style you’ve used. You can, for example, mention the title of your document in the footer on the left hand page and the title of the chapter in the footer on the right hand page or separate them by an underscore or another symbol in the same footer.

Note that a lot of built-in cover pages of MS Word (you can find them under the tab Insert > dropdown menu Cover Page) contain content controls that are inserted in text boxes. If you like to reference such content control in the header/footer of you doc, you’ll first have to remove it from it’s text box, otherwise it won’t work.

There you have it, another advantage of formatting a text document with styles!

Based on Word 2016

How to number your slides

Sometimes it’s handy to have slide numbers to refer to. How to number your slides is fairly easy so I’ll keep it short and simple!

Go to the tab Insert and click on the command Slide Number in the group Text. The dialog box Header and Footer opens. Tick Slide number and choose Apply or Apply to All et voilà, a slide number appears on the slide(s).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Troubleshooting
If this does not work, you will have to change some settings in the Slide Master View.
Go to the tab View and click on the command Slide Master. The first larger slide in the slide thumbnail pane on the right is the Master Layout. This slide controls the associated layouts underneath and is the key to a lot of settings and automatisms, like slide numbers.

Click on the command Master Layout on the tab Slide Master and tick the placeholder Slide Number > OK. Now the Master Layout has the # sign which you can format and position as you want (take the look and feel of your organisation into account).

 

 

 

 

 

 
Each layout positioned beneath the Master Layout has Title and Footers (i.e. date, slide number and footer) as default placeholders. You can tick these placeholders’ checkboxes on or off on the tab Slide Master. So if the slide number does not show up after you’ve adjusted the Master Layout, tick Footers (which include slide number) for each associated layout.

As of now you shouldn’t have any issues displaying slide numbers in normal view. Close the master view, go to the tab Insert and click on the command Slide Number in the group Text. Tick Slide number and choose Apply or Apply to All.