Sections: How to best utilize Sections in Word templates

Sections in Word is a concept of enabling multiple layouts and formats, including different headers and footers in the same Word document. This concept is clearly more advanced and baffles the average Word users. So we recommend to carefully think about how to best use sections in your Word templates.

In case users need to create new sections in their documents, the template should be configured so that the header and footer are automatically set correctly. This is no problem for documents with the same header and footer for the first and following pages.

Documents with different header and/or footer for the first page compared to the following pages should take care of this on a template level. We suggest to create a continuous section break on the first page and not use the section option 'different first page' in the first section of the document. Please also disconnect the first section header and footer from the second section header and footer. You can then design the header and footer for the first page in the first section's header and footer.  The design of the following pages you would then define in the second section's header and footer. This way, if users insert new sections, the new sections will be automatically linked to the second section's header and footer and, therefore, correctly show the header and footer for the following pages. Ensure that your section break for the second section is as far to the top of the first page as possible. This will reduce the risk for uses to create new sections within the first section.

Section structure for complex documents like books, reports, etc.

Complex documents like books, reports will usually require several pre-defined sections. Please be aware of even and odd headers and footers and do enough testing to ensure they work as you would expect.

Section structure for Mail merge documents

Please be aware the using the Word mail merge function merging into a document will create a new section for each record in your mail merge data file. That is why a different total number of pages might be required in your headers or footers, often leading to creating a separate template for mail merge use cases.