How to Protect the Header and Footer Areas Without Protecting the Rest Microsoft Word

Here are the key steps to protect the header and footer areas while allowing editing of the rest of the document in Word:

Use Section Breaks

1. Place your cursor at the beginning of the document. Go to the “Layout” tab and click “Breaks” > “Continuous” to insert a section break.
2. Select the section break and go to the “Home” tab. In the “Paragraph” group, click the dialog box launcher to open the “Paragraph” dialog box.
3. Under “Text Flow”, change the section start to “New Page”. Click “OK”.
4. Place your cursor right after the section break and create your header and footer.

Restrict Editing

5. Go to the “Review” tab and click “Restrict Editing”.
6. In the pane that appears, check the box for “Allow only this type of editing in the document” and select “Filling in forms” from the dropdown.
7. Click “Yes, Start Enforcing Protection”. Enter a password (optional).

Now only the body text of the document can be edited. The header, footer, and section break are protected.

To edit the protected areas, go to the “Review” tab and click “Stop Protection”. Enter the password if prompted. Make your edits to the header/footer, then restart protection.

Let me know if you have any other questions!