The terms Header and Footer arrived from the word processing programs. These denote repeated elements that show
at the top and bottom of every page. Headers and Footers are different from each other on PowerPoint slides only considering their position, the
Footer is a line of text that usually appears at the bottom of a slide, as shown highlighted in red
within Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: Footer in PowerPoint
Typically, the Footer area includes three placeholders:
- Date
- Footer (You add a message, a company name, or anything you want to be visible on all slides here)
- Slide number
By default, the footer with one or more of these three placeholders appears on every slide in a presentation, but you can
change that as required. You can also move the content within the Footer area to the top of your slide, as shown highlighted in
red within Figure 2. By doing so, you change a Footer to a
Header!
Figure 2: Footer moved to the top of the slide
In this tutorial, we'll learn how to make Footers (or Headers) visible on your slides:
- Open the presentation where you want to add a Header or Footer. Choose the
Insert | Header and Footer menu option as shown in Figure 3.
-
Figure 3: Header and Footer option within Insert menu
- This brings up the Header and Footer dialog box, as shown in Figure 4.
-
Figure 4: Slide tab within Header and Footer dialog box
- Make sure that the Slide tab is selected within the Header and Footer dialog box, so that
the options you select or deselect will only affect the slides you see on screen rather than your printed handouts. All these options
are explained below, as marked in Figure 4:
A. Date and time
- Select this check-box to make the date appear on your slide(s). Then choose whether you want the date
and time to Update Automatically, or set them to Fixed:
- i. Update Automatically: Select this radio button and then open the drop-down list (see
Figure 5) to choose a date (or date and time) format.
-
Figure 5: Date (or date and time) format drop-down list
- ii. Fixed: Select this radio button and enter a date in the text box, as shown in
Figure 6 below (highlighted in red). By default, this uses the current date, also
the date remains the same no matter when or where you edit or deliver your presentation.
-
Figure 6: Fixed radio button selected
Tip: If you choose the Fixed option, you can actually add anything else, even if it is not a
date! Type whatever you want to appear within the Date placeholder.
B. Slide number
- Select this check-box as shown in Figure 6 above, to enable the slide number to be
visible on your slide(s). Also, mention the digit at which you want the slide numbering to start from within the
Starts at box, highlighted in blue within Figure 6, above. Learn more in our
Working with Slide Numbers tutorials.
C. Footer
- This check-box, when selected, makes the Footer visible on all the slides of your
presentation. Also, when this check-box is selected, the text box below gets activated where you can enter the content of the
footer, as shown in Figure 7. Typically, users like to type in stuff like Confidential, Draft, etc. in this
area, or even copyright notices.
-
Figure 7: Add Footer text
D. Don't show on title slide
- Selecting this check-box will enable the selected Header and Footer options on all
slides except the Title slide.
- You can similarly add and edit Headers and Footers in your Notes and Handout pages, look at our
Add Headers and Footers to Notes
and Handout pages in PowerPoint 2011 to learn more.
-
Now you need to apply the choices you made, here you have three options:
- Click the Apply to All button to apply the Header or Footer to all slides in your presentation.
- Click the Apply button to apply the Header or Footer to just the active slide in your presentation.
- Click the Cancel button to abandon all options selected.
- Save your presentation often.