Setting Up a Book Template Part 16

Adding a line to a header and footer creates a frame for the text on a page that is a decorative element of your layout. To create the frame, you add the line below the header and above the footer. The line can be any sort of line. I tend to like thin straight lines because I like the clean look of it. However, in family histories, particularly commemorative books, I’ve seen all sorts of lines. My favorites tend to be what I call the little town lines. Here’s an example.

This line is free Microsoft clip art that has been around in one form or another for years.

Using graphics software—something as simple as Paint—you can create your own line or string all sorts of copied bits together to create lines. You just need to make sure that your line isn’t too wide or too long for the space you have in a header or footer. This is of course art again…I avoid art because I can usually find the art I need online and free.

If this topic sounds familiar, it’s not your imagination. I’ve talked about these lines in an earlier post. See Frame Up Part One. When adding that post, I had not started this series about templates. However, now that we are here, there are a few things you should consider when adding these lines (and other element you might want to add to headers and footers) to make dealing with them in a template easier.

If It’s Art

When you add a graphic as the decorative element—for example, the little town line above—you can use the Same as previous (Link to Previous) in headers and footers to control where the line does or does not appear. You got lots of practice using these tools while setting up Genealogy Book.

In the case to the little town line, I would be inclined to add it to footers…all of my footers. Center it and add footer text below it. I would match the font color to the color used in the little town line. The graphic could work in a header too. My inclination there would be to place it above header text and make it the only decorative header/footer element.

If It’s a Style

Another option is to modify the header and footer style so that it includes a line below header text and above footer text. You can find the instructions for adding the lines in the Frame Up Part One.

When you look at the design of the template we’ve developed (Genealogy Book) most pages include footers and headers. The exceptions are the front matter of the book (cover, title pages, etc.) and the first page of a chapter (or section), which have no header. Hmmm…that isn’t quite true. The header and footer styles have been applied on all pages in all headers and footers; however, we used the Same as previous (Link to Previous) to suppress having any text appear. If we add line elements to headers and footer, we’re going to mess up that layout because lines will suddenly start appearing in headers and footers where we don’t want them to appear.

Styles to the rescue! A simple workaround is to create a second set of header and footer styles based on the existing header and footer styles. The only difference in the new styles is that they will have another name and a line element.

Creating Header_Line

When you want to create additional header styles, be sure to start the name with Header. Word isn’t going to care what comes after Header. It just wants to know what type of style it is and the word Header gives Word that piece of information.

Steps:

1. Open Genealogy Book. I’m assuming you still have the 30 page template.
2. Display the Styles (or Styles and Formatting) pane.
3. Scroll to the first page where you have the book title in the header, which should be ii (10 of 30).
4. Double-click in the header area to open the header. In the Styles (or Styles and Formatting pane), Word moves the outline that marks the selected style to Header.
5. Create a new style based on the Header style (selected by default) and name that style Header_Line. After you click OK to save Header_Line, Word applies it to the header text…a line appears.
6. Scroll toward the beginning of the document. You’ll find that none of the previous headers have the line.
7. Scroll toward the end of the document. You’ll find that the line has been added to each header that includes the book title.
8. Go to iii (11 of 30).  You can use Go To (Ctrl + G) and enter iii.
9. Double-click in the header and apply the style Header_Line.
10. Scroll toward the beginning of the document. You’ll find that none of the previous headers have the line.
11. Scroll toward the end of the document. You’ll find that only the place where you changed the header has the line. To get the line in the remaining headers (even headers), apply the Header_Line style to the headers on the following pages: 3 (15 of 30); 7 (19 of 30); 11 (23 of 30); 15 (27 of 30).
12. Preview your document and you should see no lines where you have the style Header applied and lines where you have the style Header_Line applied. If you need to make adjustments, close the preview and click in the header and pick Header or Header_Line as appropriate.

Create Footer_Line

Repeat the process above. Substitute the word footer, where you see header. Also, when you must select a line in the Boarder dialog, select the line above the text.

Analysis

All of this works be.cause you have isolated sections with section breaks, and you are using two sets of styles: Header/Header_Line and Footer/Footer_Line.

On the surface, this task looks complicated. However, if you go step-by-step, it's easy to see what is happening. Please post questions if you have any.