Ulenda Pickett is a Project Manager and Scrum Master at ThreeWill. She has over 16 years of experience in managing and delivering projects.
Missing Header in Word
Has the header of your Microsoft Word document ever gone missing? I was recently perplexed by this issue. I almost sent out a Weekly Status Report with the wrong header. I was prepping the report in Word and vaguely thought it was missing something, but of course, I was in the middle of completing other required tasks, so I got sidetracked on that thought. Later, I took a quick look at the saved PDF version of the Weekly Status Report that I was planning to send and noticed the wrong date in the header. Immediately I went back to the Word doc and did not see a Header. You too may have encountered this issue via another scenario.
My Search for the Problem
Fearing any other potential loss while trying to figure this out, I cautiously saved a backup copy. I then tried to figure the problem out, trying all kinds of Views in Word. Of course, I also did a Bing search to try to find a solution. Noticing, of course, its’ reference to utilize the Print Layout, which I was already using. There were also a few other suggestions that I found. However, they did not work for me.
I continued to look for other settings or configuration options in Word, looking more deeply at all the tabs. Ultimately, what I found which helped me to resolve my missing header issue is shown below.
The Solution to a Missing Header in Word
I did not want to add a new Header, for fear it would mess up what was already supposed to be there. What I did notice, while the Header was not visible to me, there was an Edit Header button. When I clicked Edit Header, my Header reappeared. Mystery Solved. I could now easily make the update and send the Weekly Status Report out. One additional thing to mention is that this is the Windows Only solution. If you are using a Mac, select the View menu and then “Header and Footer” to display the Header & Footer ribbon.
Conclusion
So, if your Microsoft Word Header gets lost, it can definitely be found. One other special thing of note is if you hover over the line shown in between pages, there’s a small up arrow and down arrow icon shown opposite each other, which toggles between verbiage that says: ‘Double-click to show white space’ and ‘Double-click to hide white space’. Interestingly enough, the Header is a part of the white space. So, a quick toggle here also makes the header visible to you.
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