2 Ways to Remove the Horizontal Lines in the Header or Footer of Your Word Document

When you insert header or footer to your document, Word voluntarily adds a black horizontal line to the header or footer. This article will show you how to get rid of it.

Sometimes, you may find an unwanted horizontal line after you insert header or footer to your Word, just like this:Find an unwanted horizontal line after you insert header or footer

However, Word does not allow you to highlight or select it, and therefore you cannot easily get rid of them. To remove these unwanted lines quickly, you can refer to the following instructions.

Method 1: Remove the Line Together with other Formattings

In this section, we will first present you with a simple way to remove these horizontal lines. However, using this way, you will also remove other formatting in the header or footer, such us text centering.

  1. Double click on the header to starting editing.
  2. On the “Home” tab, click on “More Options” button in the “Styles” group.Click on “More Options” button
  3. Select “Clear Formatting” in the drop down list.Select “Clear Formatting” in the drop down list
  4. After doing so, you will be able to remove the horizontal line in the header manually. Double click at the header again to stop editing.

Method 2: Remove the Line but Retain other Formattings

If you want to delete the blank horizontal line only, but in the meantime retain other formatting in the headers, you can refer to this method.

  1. Go to “Home” tab on the ribbon.
  2. Click on “Bottom Board” drop down list, and then select “Boards and Shading”.Select “Boards and Shading”
  3. Word displays the “Boards” tab of the “Boards and Shading” dialog box, click on “None” under settings.
  4. Make sure you select “Paragraph” under apply to. And then click “OK”.Click on “None” under settings
  5. In this way, you will be able to remove only the horizontal line in the header, while you can retain other formatting in your header. Double click at the header again to stop editing.

Word can Sometimes Corrupt Unexpectedly

Anyway, we can finally get rid of the unwanted horizontal lines in the header of our Word. As many of us know, Word offer a numerous of useful functionalities to help us in our studies and works. However, problems arise when our Word attacked by malware and virus . As our Word can be compromised unexpectedly, we therefore need to take hold of a powerful word recovery tool, so that we can be assured to recover our data when some accidents occur.

Author Introduction

Kelly Zhao is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including excel recovery and pdf repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com

9 responses to “2 Ways to Remove the Horizontal Lines in the Header or Footer of Your Word Document”

  1. Hi there, just wanted to tell you, I loved this blog post. It was helpful. Keep on posting!

  2. Not working for me. I have a document with footnotes that are, of course, above the “footer”. I had page numbers (in the footer) but for unknown reasons a line recently appeared below the page numbers, presumably at the bottom of the footer (??). Cannot get rid of these. I removed page numbers; tinkered with both methods above. Horizontal line sits ca. 1/4 inch above the bottom of the page.

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