Creating a Page-Side Document Header in Word

Peggy Z. Clements

1

Hey, just because you’re stuck doing work in Microsoft Word instead of some fancy desktop publishing program doesn’t mean you can’t break the mold every so often. For example, instead of going along with convention and putting the header at the top, the body in the middle, and the footer at the bottom, why not mix it up a bit? In this article, we’ll show you how you can create an effective layout in Word by moving the header to the side (guess you’d call that a sider), moving the body to the top, and well, leaving the footer where it’s at. When you’ve finished, your layout will look something like the one shown in Figure A. Like page-top headers, a page-side header appears on every page of your document and won’t prevent you from creating a traditional header or footer.

Figure A: We created a page-side header that appears on every page of our document.

The technique

We’ll begin by making a little space in our Word document by setting a relatively wide left margin. To do so, choose Format > Document and enter 3 in the Left text box, then click OK. This margin setting accommodates a 1.5-inch text box that contains the page-side header text. As you’ll see in a moment, we’ll position the text box 1 inch from the left edge of the page and 0.5 inches from the document text.

Now that we’ve increased the width of the left margin, we’re ready to create the page-side header. This is easiest to do in Page Layout view using the Whole Page view option and Word’s ruler. Therefore, choose View > Page Layout and then choose View > Zoom to display the Zoom dialog box. Since we want to see exactly what we’re working with, choose the Whole Page option and then click the OK button.

Creating the text box

To create the page-side header, first open your document’s header area by selecting View > Header And Footer from the menu bar. Next, display the Drawing toolbar (if it isn’t displayed already) by selecting View > Toolbars > Drawing from the menu bar. Next, click the Text Box button, click anywhere on the page to create the text box, and then click and drag the drawing tool to make the box. Don’t worry about the size and position, but try to get it in the general area of the left side of the page. To precisely size and position the text box, double-click on it to open the Format Text Box dialog box. Next, select the Size tab and type 10 in the Height text box. Next, type 1.5 in the Width text box.

To position the text box, click on the Position tab and enter 0.5 in the Horizontal text box and 0.5 in the Vertical text box. Now, choose Page in both of the From pop-up menus. This spaces the text box evenly between the top and bottom of the page.

Customizing the borders

When you insert a text box, Word automatically places a border around it. For our sample page-side header, however, we want only a vertical line to the right of the page-side header. To achieve this effect, you must first remove the text box’s default borders. Click on the Colors And Lines tab, and then select No Line from the Line panel’s Color dropdown list. When you’ve finished, click OK.

Now, we’ll add a border to the right edge of the text box. Click in the text box and select Format > Borders And Shading. In the Preview area of the dialog box, click on the sample page’s right border to activate it. When you’ve finished, click OK. Your document should now resemble the one shown in Figure B.

Figure B: The text box extends the length of the page.

Adding header information

Now you’re ready to add the information you want to include in your page-side header. Simply click in the page-side header text box and add any information you’d like. You can format the text using Word’s formatting options just as you would regular text.

Taking it a step further

Now that you have the idea, why not experiment with the technique. For example, try shading the text box and changing the font color to white. Maybe even change the orientation of the text by clicking in the text box and choosing Format > Text Direction. With a little creativity, you can end up with a document that in no way would lead one to think it was created in Word, as illustrated by our fancy example in Figure C.

Figure C: This doesn’t look like anything we’ve ever seen created in Word!

Conclusion

When you want to enhance the appearance of a document, consider taking advantage of the flexibility that text boxes offer for varying document design. In this article, we’ve shown you how to use a text box to position a header along the side of your document rather than across the top.

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