How to Remove Header and Footer in Excel?

Headers and footers are extremely important elements of Excel that let you add essential information like page number, company name, phone number, and other stuff to your workbook.

It’s easy to add headers and footers in Excel, but do you know how to get rid of them? You might need to remove headers to make the worksheet look neater and more compact or you simply need to focus on the actual data without having to account for other petty things.

Luckily, Excel provides a variety of ways that you can use to remove headers and footers. We have explained each method in great detail below. So without further ado, let’s get right into it.

How to Find Header and Footer in Excel?

To remove headers and footers in Excel, you first need to know where to find them. Let’s see a quick demo of how to find and display headers and footers.

You won’t be able to see headers and footers on the home page of Excel. That’s because Excel doesn’t show headers in the normal workbook view.

So how do we add and see them? We enable them and change the view of the worksheet.

To do that,

1. Go to the Page Layout tab.
2.  Under the Sheet Options heading, checkmark View if you haven’t already.
3.  If you want to make changes to the text or alignment, right-click the small arrow at the bottom right corner of the section.

4. The Page Setup dialog box will appear.
5. Go to the Header/Footer tab.
6. Enter a particular text using the custom header or footer feature or change alignment and scaling using the checkmarks below.

7. Click Ok.

Now, to view the header and footer,

1. Go to the View tab.
2. Under the Workbook Views heading, select Page Layout.

3. Your worksheet layout will change, and the header will appear on your screen.

And it’s done. Easy, no?

#1 Use the Insert Tab

Removing the header and footer from the Insert tab is extremely easy and takes less than ten seconds.

Want to know how? Let’s see below.

To remove the header,

1. Go to the Insert tab on the ribbon.
2. Click on Text at the end of the ribbon.
3. Select Header and Footer from the dropdown.

4. This will change the view of the worksheet to Page Layout.
5. You can see the header and footer on the screen.

6. Select any part of the header and press the Delete or Backspace key on your keyboard.
7. Do the same with footer – select it and then press the Backspace key.

Click somewhere on your screen to deselect the selection, and it’s done. The header or footer will be removed from your screen.

How quick was that?

Other things that you can do with the help of the Insert tab include:

#2 Use a Status Bar

You can also delete the header and footer in your Excel sheet using the Status bar. This method is the fastest of all and takes no time.

If you don’t know what the status bar is, it’s the small bar that appears at the bottom of your worksheet and contains the Zoom bar.

To remove the header and footer,

1. Go to the Status bar.
2.  Click on the Page Layout icon (second one) on the bar.

3. This will change the view of the worksheet to page layout.
4. Select the header on the worksheet and press the Delete or backspace key on your keyboard.

And it’s done. The header will be removed from the screen instantly.

Pretty easy, no?

#3 Use the Page Layout Tab

Let’s now see how to remove the header and footer in Excel using the Page Layout tab.

Say, we have the following worksheet with a header and footer.

To remove it,

1. Go to the Page Layout tab on the ribbon.
2. Under the Page Setup heading, click on the small arrow at the bottom right corner of the section.

3. This will open the Page Setup dialog box.
4. Select the Header/Footer tab from the window.
5. In the Header and Footer area, select none from the options for both.

6. Click Ok.

This will remove the header and footer from your worksheet in one go.

Easy, right?

#4 Use the Print Options

You can also remove headers and footers from your worksheet using the Print feature of Excel while printing.

This can be handy if you’re also in the process of printing with gridlines.

To do that,

1. Go to the File tab from the ribbon.
2. Select Print from the options.
3. Click on Page Setup at the bottom of the screen.

The Page Setup dialog box will appear. It can be used to change the appearance of your worksheet, like margins, size, orientation, etc.

4. Click on the Header/Footer tab in the window.
5. In the Header and Footer bar, select none.

6. Click Ok.

The header and footer will be removed from the worksheet just like that.

How easy is that? Try it now!

#5 Use the View Tab

Another easy way to remove the header and footer is by using the View tab.

Want to see how? Read on.

Say, we have the following set of data with a header.

To remove these,

1. Select the View tab from the ribbon.
2.  Click on the Page Layout option under the heading of Workbook Views.

3. This will change the view of the worksheet to Page Layout, where you can see the header and footer on the worksheet.
4. Select any header and press Backspace or Delete.

The selected header will be deleted.

5. Select the footer and press Backspace.

The footer will also be deleted.

Pretty clean, no? Try doing it on your computer.

#6 VBA Code

Removing the header and footer using VBA code is the quickest and most fun method. All you need to do is write a code, and the headers and footers will be deleted automatically.

This is also a method you can use when moving a chart to a new sheet.

Let’s see how to do that below.

1. To open the VBA window, press Alt + F11 on the keyboard.
2.  The dialog box will appear.
3.  On the menu bar, go to the Insert tab.
4.  From the options, select Module.

This will open the window where you will enter the code.

Sub RemoveHeadersFooters()

    Dim was As Worksheet

    Dim sht As Object

    ' Loop through all worksheets in the active workbook

    For Each was In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets

        Set sht = ws.PageSetup

        ' Clear headers and footers

        sht.LeftHeader = ""

        sht.CenterHeader = ""

        sht.RightHeader = ""

        sht.LeftFooter = ""

        sht.CenterFooter = ""

        sht.RightFooter = ""

    Next ws

End Sub

5. Copy and paste the above code into the Module2 window.

6. Press F5 on your keyboard to run the code or select the Run option from the menu bar.

This will remove all the headers and footers in the entire workbook.

COMMENT

The VBA code written above uses a 'RemoveHeadersFooters' sub-procedure. The For loop checks through each worksheet for headers and footers in the workbook. It uses the Header and Footer properties to clear them out, after which the sub-procedure ends.

Conclusion

All in all, removing headers and footers in Excel is a super easy and quick process. This guide explains different methods you can use to clear out your worksheet of headers and footers.

You can try using the Insert tab method or the Page Layout method; each is just as quick. Our favorite technique has to be using the VBA code – the process is fun, and the headers go away as soon as you run the code on the VBA editor.

Have you decided on your favorite method of removing footers? If not, then what are you waiting for? Try each technique now and choose the one that suits you best.