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Guide

Headers & footers

A header or footer repeats the same band of content, like a page number, a company name or a letterhead, at the top or bottom of every page in a section.

What it is

Each section has its own optional header and footer zone. A zone is a band across the page that grows to fit what you put in it: its height setting is a minimum, and if the content needs more room the band takes it and the body starts lower on every page of that section.

Key options

  • A switch to turn the header (or footer) on or off — turning it off deletes whatever blocks the zone held, so turning it back on starts from an empty zone again
  • Its minimum height
  • Which physical pages to hide it on, counted across the whole document — typing the list in one go is a single undo step, not one per keystroke
  • "+ Add text block" and "+ Add page number" — two shortcuts for the blocks a zone most often holds

How editing works

Turn the zone on from the Section tab in the side panel. The band then appears on every page of that section, dashed and labelled.

Click the band to aim at it. The block palette's "Adding to:" line at the top of the left rail tells you where the next block will land — "Adding to: Body", "Adding to: Header", or "Adding to: Header · Section 2" when the document has more than one section. Clicking a palette tile, dragging one into the band, or pasting all put the block there. Selecting a block that is already in a header aims at that header too, so adding a second line next to the first needs no extra step. Click anywhere in the body to aim back at the body.

Inside a zone, blocks stack the way they do in the body, and you edit them the same way: click one on the page to change its text or settings, put a Row or a Stack in to lay several out side by side, and add or remove blocks inside those containers from the Contents list in the inspector.

What a zone will not take

A header or footer repeats on every page and is never split across one, so blocks that need to paginate or grow with your data cannot go in one: Table, Repeater, Ruled form, Page break and the rest. Those tiles are greyed out in the palette while a zone is the destination, and the tile says why when you hover it.

Tips

  • The band's own label tells you what is happening to it: "Header — click to add" while it is empty, "Header · 36 mm (minimum 26 mm)" once its content has pushed it past the height you set, and "Header — hidden on this page" on a page the "Hide on pages" list names. A hidden band is not a target — nothing of the zone prints there.
  • Duplicating, deleting, cutting and moving a header or footer block on the page are not available yet. Duplicate and Delete in the block's menu are greyed out with the reason, and Ctrl+D, Delete and the arrow keys show a message saying why nothing happened. To take a block out, use its remove button in the Section tab, or the Contents list for a block nested inside a container.
  • Wrap in Stack, Wrap in Row and Unwrap aren't available for header or footer blocks yet either — their menu shows those entries greyed out with that reason. With the palette aimed at the zone, add a Row from the palette, or an empty Stack through its Search ("empty group"), instead and put the blocks into it.
  • Blocks cannot be dragged between the header, the body and the footer. To bring one in from the body, copy it, aim at the zone, then paste. Taking one back out is not available yet.
  • Removing a block from the zone doesn't turn the zone off; use the switch for that. The switch does delete every block the zone held, so re-enabling it starts empty.

Header, footer, or Base-PDF letterhead?

A header and footer are blocks you build, so they can hold fields (your company's details) and page numbers, and they appear in the PDF, the web page and the Word file. A Base-PDF letterhead (Section tab) is a PDF of your pre-printed stationery stamped behind every page: it can hold artwork you cannot build, but nothing in it can change, and it appears in the PDF only. They work together. Letterhead and footer is the full walkthrough.

Page numbers

Press + Add page number in the zone, or add a Page number block. By default it prints "N / total"; change the wording to suit — Page {{ $page.number }} of {{ $page.count }} prints "Page 2 of 5". If the document has several sections, {{ $page.sectionNumber }} and {{ $page.sectionCount }} count pages within the section instead (see Page number).

Hiding a header or footer on some pages

For a cover page, or a letterhead that only the first page carries, turn on Hide on the first page under the Header or the Footer (each has its own). The first page of each section then has no header (or footer), and the body uses that space: its text starts higher on that page. This is Word's "different first page". It follows the section: a second section's first page is hidden too.

To hide a band on other pages, type page numbers in Hide on pages, counted across the whole document: 5 hides it on page 5, 1,5,7-9 on pages 1, 5, 7, 8 and 9. Here the band's space stays reserved on a hidden page, so the body does not move up. That is the difference from Hide on the first page: 1 in Hide on pages blanks the band on page 1 but leaves it empty, and the body does not gain the space. If both name page 1, Hide on the first page wins and the body takes the space.

If something looks wrong

  • The header pushes my text down more than I expected. The band grew to fit its content, and its label says by how much ("Header · 36 mm (minimum 26 mm)"). Shorten the content or reduce font sizes. Together a header and footer that leave less than 20 mm for the body are flagged.
  • I cannot add a table, a line or a repeater to the header. Those blocks need to grow or break, so the palette greys them out for a zone. Use a Row, Stack, Text, Image or Page number; for a rule, give the Row a bottom border.
  • Page numbers read "1 / 1" on every page. The page-number block sits in the body, not the zone.
  • The header shows on pages where I turned it off. Page numbers in Hide on pages count the whole document, not the section; a second section's first page is not "1". To hide it on every section's first page, use Hide on the first page instead.
  • The Word file's page numbers do not update when I add a page by hand. They are written in as text when the file is made; regenerate instead.