How to Make the Header Smaller in Word 2013

Your school or organization likely has some specific formatting settings that you need to follow. Some of these are easier to adjust than others, especially if you need to make the header smaller in Word 2013.

The header section of a Word document will typically contain some combination of information like your page numbers, name, or document title. It’s useful to put information in the header because it can repeat on every page.

But when you need to remove some of the white space from a document in Word 2013, two of the most common areas to look are the header and the footer.

Fortunately you can adjust some settings for both of these locations that will allow you to minimize the amount of space that they use.

Our guide below will show you two different settings that you can modify which will make the header section of your document smaller.

Related: How to Set 1 Inch Margins in Word 2011

How to Make the Header Smaller in Word 2013

  1. Open the document.
  2. Double-click inside the header.
  3. Click inside the Header from Top field.
  4. Enter a smaller value

Our article continues below with additional information on making the header smaller in Word 2013, including pictures of these steps.

Find out how to get rid of space between paragraphs in Google Docs if you also edit documents there and want to know how to edit spacing.

How to Make a Smaller Header in Microsoft Word (Guide with Pictures)

The steps in this article will adjust the size of the header for the document that you are currently editing in Word 2013. It will not change the default settings for the Normal template, so other documents that you create in Word 2013 will not be affected by this change.

Step 1: Open your document in Word 2013.

Step 2: Double-click inside the Header area of the document to make it the active section.

This is also going to open a new Header & Footer Tools Design tab at the top of the window.

click the design tab

Step 3: Click inside the Header from Top field and change the value to a smaller number.

Note that you may not be able to see the complete header when printing if you set the value to something lower than 0.2″.

make the header smaller

You can also adjust the size of the Header section by changing the top margin. Click the Page Layout tab at the top of the window, then click the small Page Setup button at the bottom-right corner of the Page Setup section of the ribbon.

open page setup menu

Click inside the Top field in the Margins section and enter a lower number. You can then click the OK button at the bottom of the window to apply your changes.

make the top margin smaller

Note that you may encounter issues where your printer is unable to print a document if the top margin value is too small.

Do you need the page numbering in your document to start on a page other than the first? Learn how to adjust the starting point for page numbering if, for example, you have a title page on which you do not need to include a number.

See also

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