Deleting All Headers and Footers

If you work with documents you receive from other people, one of the tasks you may routinely need to do is delete all the headers and footers in the documents. One way to do this is to simply select the various headers and footers and delete them, but if the document contains many sections, doing so can be very time consuming. (Particularly if you consider that each section can have up to three different headers and footers.)

Repetitious, time-consuming tasks are always a prime candidate for macros; this is no exception. The following macro will zip right through each section of a document, deleting all the headers and footers that have been defined.

Sub RemoveHeadAndFoot()
    Dim oSec As Section
    Dim oHead As HeaderFooter
    Dim oFoot As HeaderFooter

    For Each oSec In ActiveDocument.Sections
        For Each oHead In oSec.Headers
            If oHead.Exists Then oHead.Range.Delete
        Next oHead

        For Each oFoot In oSec.Footers
            If oFoot.Exists Then oFoot.Range.Delete
        Next oFoot
    Next oSec
End Sub

This macro is very powerful--it doesn't ask if you want to proceed, nor does it consider what may be included in the headers and footers. It simply deletes them all, leaving your document with none. If you regularly process quite a few documents, you can easily assign the macro to a toolbar button, menu item, or shortcut key.