Small City Law Firm Tech

This minor, but majorly annoying, issue has recently been bedeviling one of our users.  It’s easy to get oneself into this situation, but getting out is not so intuitive.

The problem: you’re drafting a document that has a Header (usually the firm logo and associated information), and suddenly it disappears from view.  You know you didn’t delete it, because when you print out your draft, there it is, right where it should be.  But you can’t *see* it when viewing the draft document on the monitor, and it’s not only disconcerting, it makes final setup a little more cumbersome.

How to make that shy header pop into view and show itself off again?  Fortunately, it’s just as easy to make it reappear as it was to make disappear.  Here’s what happened and how to fix it:

Normally, Word is set up in Print Layout view, where most of us work, to show Headers and Footers.  That’s why you’ll see the Logo and related info when drafting a letter:

But, sometimes, without intending to do it, you double-click in the wrong spot in your document and then your document suddenly looks like this:

It’s the same document, but the Header is no longer visible.  If you look to the left Ruler, you can see that the Header and Margin portion of the document have been ‘squished’ to show the top of the Margin at the top of the document.

What happened is this: You inadvertently double-clicked on the line immediately above the top of your document.  This action tells Word to hide the ‘white space’ in the document, which includes the Header. (Note how the cursor changes to two arrow pointing at each other when they’re in that ‘danger’ zone)

Thankfully, another double-click in that same area will ‘unhide’ the white space (including the Header), and you’ll be back in business (just make sure that your cursor changes to those 2 arrows again and then you’ll know you’re in the right spot to double-click):

Once that Header is back on display you’re good to go.