One question I get asked a lot is how to create unique headers for different sections in an MS-Word document. For example, you might want to have different headers with each chapter name to help readers find the section they're looking for more quickly.

I'm going to provide the steps using Word 2003, because they're pretty much the same in earlier versions. Then I'll list where to find the same commands in Word 2007 at the end of this post.

To illustrate the process, I've created a Word file from an earlier post: The INs of LinkedIn. You can download this file if you want to follow along with the steps yourself.

The document has three main topics in it: Invitations, Introductions, and InMails. Let's say I want to start each of these topics on a new page and create a different header with the topic name for each, with no header at all on the first page.

You may already know that you can force a page break by placing your cursor in front of the text you want to start on the next page and pressing Ctrl + Enter on your keyboard. (And if you don't know that, consider this a bonus tip! :)

However, that won't work for our purpose. We don't want to just move the text to the next page; we want to start a new section so we can create a topic-specific header. We'll start by creating one for Invitations.

Put your cursor at the start of the Invitations heading.

From the Insert menu, select Break.

In the dialog box that comes up, select the "Next page" radio button from the "Section break types" area.

Now the Invitations heading is at the top of the next page. You can tell it's also the beginning of a new section by looking at the status line at the bottom left of the Word window.

From the View menu, click Header and Footer.

The header section of the page will be shown and the Header and Footer toolbar also appears.

You'll notice, above the header box, it says "Same as previous." This is the default option for when you create a header, and that's what we need to change.

Click the Same as Previous button on the toolbar.

You can mouse over the buttons to see the names of them. You want to click it so it doesn't look like it's depressed.

The "Same as previous" text is now gone from the header box.

Type "Invitations" in the Header area.

Double-click in the main text area of the page.

This will close the header section and remove the toolbar.

Note: I tabbed twice to have the text align to the right of the header.

Now, if you scroll back up to the first page, you can see that it has no header text, because the two headers are no longer linked.

Simply repeat these steps for each new section and you can have as many different headers as you want.

Instructions for Word 2007

Here are where you can find the same commands as the above in the Windows 2007 interface.

• To create a new section, place your cursor in front of the text and, from the Page Layout ribbon, select Breaks > Section Breaks > Next Page.
• To add a header, go to the Insert ribbon. Click the Header button and, from the dropdown menu, click on Blank.
• When you create the header, a new Design ribbon opens. It has the button for Llink to Previous, which you want to turn off.

You can now enter your header text, and it will be different from the header in the previous section.

Posted in Formatting, How To, MS-Word