locking out header/footer (Word 2003 )

[garcich1]

Hello, I'm trying to lock out the header & footer of my word document so that no one can edit it---using it as a letter head. But I want individuals to be able to edit the remainder of the document. Can anyone help?

[HansV]

One way is to protect the document for forms. Create at least two sections in the document, and leave all but one section unprotected. (Unfortunately, protecting a document for forms disables much more than editing headers and footers alone.)

A partial solution for a non-protected document is to create a blank macro named ViewHeader. This will disable the View | Header and Footer menu option, but the user can still double click the header or footer to activate it, so this is not really secure.

Yet another option is to use application-level event handling in VBA. This is rather complicated, and also rather fragile. See How can I prevent users from editing the header of a document in Word 2000 or higher? on the Word MVP site.