How to Edit Header in Excel (6 Easy Methods)

In Excel, you may add headers to the top of a printed worksheet. For example, you could make a header with the name of your organization, the date of publication, and the name of your file. You can make your own or choose from a variety of in-built headers. Here we will take you through 6 easy and convenient ways to edit header in Excel.

Let’s say we have a dataset of employees of the IT department of an organization named ABC containing their attendance list for the month of May 2022. By default, the header of our Excel file is blank.

How to Edit Header in Excel

We want our Left Header, Center Header, and Right Header to indicate the Organization’s Name, Department, and Month respectively. Now we’ll edit our header to show “ABC”, “Department: IT” and “May, 2022” as our new Left, Center and Right Header. Here, we’ll show a handful of different methods of editing header in Excel. So let’s go through them one by one.


1. Editing Header Using the Insert Tab in Excel

In our 1st method, we will learn to edit header using the Insert Tab. Please follow the steps below.

Steps:

  • Go to Insert > Text > Header & Footer.

How to Edit Header in Excel

  • Now in the Header box, the cursor will go to the left header first. Write down our desired header “ABC” in the left header box. Then place the cursor at the center header box and write down “Department: IT”. Similarly, do the same thing in the right header box and write down “May 2022”.

How to Edit Header in Excel

  • After finishing, click anywhere in the worksheet to leave the header area.

How to Edit Header in Excel

Read More: How to Add Header in Excel


2. Engaging Page Layout Tab to Edit Header

For editing the header, we use the Page Layout tab in this method. The steps are as follows.

Steps:

  • At first, select the Page Layout tab. Then click on the small arrow on the bottom right corner of the Page Setup group. By clicking this, you will open a Page Setup dialog box. Now, select Header/Footer > Custom Header.

How to Edit Header in Excel

  • By clicking on Custom Header, you will open another dialog box named Header. At the lower part of that box, there is space to input your 3 different headers. Fill that box up and click OK.

  • This action will return you to the Page Setup dialog box. In the Header option, you can see our custom header as highlighted. Finally, click OK.

  • You can see our worksheet illustrated with the header on top.

Read More: How to Maintain Excel Header Alignment


3. Editing Header Through View Tab in Excel

Here we’ll use the Page Layout view from the View tab. The steps are as follows.

Steps:

  • From the ribbon select View. Then from the Workbook Views group click on Page Layout.

  • This will show the workbook as Page Layout view and here we can see the Add header option.

How to Edit Header in Excel

  • Now, click on Add header and write down the header names just as method 1.

How to Edit Header in Excel

Read More: How to Print Excel Sheet with Header on Every Page in Excel


4. Using Status Bar to Edit Header in Excel

The most efficient and time-saving way to edit the header in Excel is to use the Status Bar. We are giving this method step by step to save you from consuming time and be more effective in your workplace.

Steps:

  • Follow the image below to select the Page Layout option from the Status Bar placed at the bottom part of the Excel window.

How to Edit Header in Excel

  • This action will turn the workbook into Page Layout view in the minimum effort. Now you can edit your header by clicking the Add header box same as previous methods.

How to Edit Header in Excel


5. Editing Header While Printing in Excel

We also can edit our header at the time of printing. Here are the steps below.

Steps:

  • Firstly, go to the File tab from the ribbon.

How to Edit Header in Excel

  • Then from the left side panel select Print and from the print option click on Page Setup.

How to Edit Header in Excel

  • By clicking this, you will open a Page Setup dialog box just like we did in method 2. Now, select Header/Footer > Custom Header. The remaining procedure is just like method 2.

  • After finishing the additional procedures, we can see our document in the Print Preview option with a header.

Read More: How to Keep Header in Excel When Printing


6. Applying VBA Code for Editing Header

Using VBA code to do any task in Excel is always a fun and convenient alternative. If you want to edit your header with VBA code, follow the steps below.

Steps:

  • Firstly, right-click on the Sheet name and select View Code.

  • Instantly a window named Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications opens. Now, from Toggle folders select Sheet7 (VBA) > Insert > Module.

  • Right away a window appears on right. Now, copy the following code and paste it down into the window.
Sub Edit_Header()
With Sheets("VBA").PageSetup
      .LeftHeader = "ABC"
      .CenterHeader = "Department: IT"
       .RightHeader = "May, 2022"
End With
End Sub

How to Edit Header in Excel

In the above code, we used the PageSetup object to assign the relevant page setup attributes along with the With statement. Later, we used the LeftHeader property to input the specified text in the header (left-aligned). Similarly, we applied the CenterHeader and RightHeader properties for getting the output in the header (center-aligned and right-aligned respectively).

  • Lastly, select Run from the top ribbon and then close the window. You can see header in your worksheet by going to Page Layout view using the Status Bar.

How to Edit Header in Excel


How to Remove Header in Excel Completely

To remove the header in Excel completely, you’ve to use the Page Setup dialog box. The steps are as follows.

Steps:

  • First, select Page Layout tab from the ribbon. Then, click on the small Page Setup icon and from the Page Setup dialog box select none and click OK.

How to Edit Header in Excel

  • Now, turning the view from Normal to Page Layout, we can see that our header is completely blank.

How to Edit Header in Excel


How to Make the Header Different on the First Page

If you want the first page of your Excel worksheet to have a different header, you can follow the steps below.

Steps:

  • At the very beginning, select the Page Layout tab. Then click on the Page Setup icon in the bottom right corner. By clicking this, you will open a Page Setup dialog box. Now, select Header/Footer > check mark Different first page > select Custom Header.

How to Edit Header in Excel

  • We can see a header dialog box like before. But the difference is, that it has a new tab named First Page Header which wasn’t available before. Now we can give a completely different header on the first page of the worksheet. For example, we’re giving the file name as our first-page header. Select First Page Header > Center Section > Insert File Name symbol.

How to Edit Header in Excel

  • Now, in the Page Layout view, we can see that our first page has a different header name.


Things to Remember

  • Sometimes, you cannot see the header in the Normal view. Always you have to shift the view to Page Layout.
  • Press ENTER to start a new line in the header box.
  • Use two ampersands in the text of a header to incorporate a single ampersand (&). For example, to include “Rasel & Brothers” in a header, type Rasel && Brothers.

Download Practice Workbook

You may download the following Excel workbook for better understanding and practice yourself.


Conclusion

Here we’ve tried to show you 6 methods of editing header in Excel. Thank you for reading this article, we hope this was helpful. If you have any queries or suggestions, please let us know in the comment section.


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Shahriar Abrar Rafid
Shahriar Abrar Rafid

Shahriar Abrar Rafid, BSc, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Bangladesh, has worked with the ExcelDemy project for more than 1 year. He has written over 100+ articles for ExcelDemy. He is a professional visual content developer adept at crafting scripts, meticulously editing Excel files, and delivering insightful video tutorials for YouTube channels. His work and learning interests vary from Microsoft Office Suites and Excel to Data Analysis, VBA, and Video recording and... Read Full Bio

2 Comments
  1. Actually it’s not what I’m searching. But kinda similar maybe. My datatset is pretty long in the vertical direction. Whenever i scroll down the column headings moves up. So, i got confused which data means what. Is it clear to you? Thanks in advance.

    • Hello NEA KYTONEN,
      I’ve understood your problem. Don’t worry, I have the solution also. See the image below.

      This is quite a long dataset. This worksheet has 716 rows. So, whenever you scroll down in the sheet, the column headers go up and get vanished from the display like the following image.

      As a result, you cannot see the headings and you messed up with a huge amount of data. There is an easy solution to this problem. See the steps below.
      • At first, select the row just under the header row. Here, it is Row 5.
      • Then, go to the View tab.
      • After that, click on the Freeze Panes drop-down on the Window group of commands.
      • Lastly, select the Freeze Panes feature.

      Now, you can see we have scrolled down to Row 77 still headings are there in their positions.

      That’s all from me on this topic. Hope you find it helpful. Let us know if you have any other issues respecting Excel. Also, follow our website, ExcelDemy, a one-stop Excel solution provider to explore more.

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