When printing out copies of spreadsheets in Excel, it is sometimes very useful to add a header and/or footer with the date and time, page numbers, filename, etc.  In this way, there no guess work involved in determining which print out is the most recent, what file the print out was made from, and page numbers can be referred to in meetings or other correspondence.  In addition, when printing out a large spreadsheet, it may be necessary to have particular rows or columns print at the top or left side of each page.  For example, when printing out employee information that has several columns, you would want the employee names to appear on the left hand side of each page so there is no confusion as to which employee the information belongs.  Let's start with creating a header and/or footer.  Are you ready?

Creating a Header and/or Footer

In this example, we are working with a schedule of software training sessions that will be offered to employees after regular business hours.  The spreadsheet goes on for several pages and covers 3 months.  Rows 3 & 4 will be repeated as the first rows of every printed page following the first in Part 2 of this tutorial:  

To add a header and/or footer:

1. From the View menu, choose Header and Footer.  The Page Setup dialog box allows you to choose a previously used header/footer with the drop-down arrow, or create a new header/footer with the Custom buttons.

2. The same steps are followed for both headers and footers.  Let's add a footer.  Choose the Custom Footer button.  The Header/Footer dialog box displays as shown below.

Note there are three sections.  Text in the Left section is left-aligned, the Center section is center-aligned, and the Right section is right-aligned.  Excel uses codes to insert page numbers, dates, times, etc.  These codes are placed in the header or footer by using the buttons described in the above diagram.  Text and codes can be combined to obtain the desired result.

3. The cursor should be flashing in the Left section.  If not, click inside the Left section. Type "Training Department" and press Enter.  Choose the Date button to insert the date below the department name.

4. Press Tab to move to the Center section.  In this section, we want the page numbers to read "Page 1 of 5", for example.  Type "Page", press Space, choose the Page Number button, press Space, type "of", press Space, and choose the Total Pages button.

5. Press Tab to move to the Right section.  In the Right section, choose the Sheet Tab Name button, press Enter, and choose the Filename button.  This gives us the exact location of the printed information should we need it at some point in time.

If you want to change the font attributes, select the text/codes the same way you would select text in any document, and choose the Font button.  Make your selections in the Font dialog box and choose OK.

6. Once all three sections are complete, choose OK on the Header/Footer dialog box.  A preview of your new header or footer is shown in the Page Setup dialog box.

7. To see how it would look with the actual spreadsheet, choose Print Preview.  The Options button allows you to change page orientation, paper size, etc.  Choose OK to accept the footer and return to the spreadsheet.

That's it!  Are you ready to tackle repeating rows and columns?  Page breaks?