Headers and Footers and Section Breaks

If you want to get rid of all headers and footers, just delete them manually as Graham suggested. Or you could use the following macro to get rid of all headers and footers in one step:

Sub DeleteHeadersAndFooters()
Dim s As Section
For Each s In ActiveDocument.Sections
s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterEvenPages).Range.Text = ""
s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterFirstPage).Range.Text = ""
s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).Range.Text = ""

s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterEvenPages).Range.Text = ""
s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterFirstPage).Range.Text = ""
s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).Range.Text = ""
Next s
End Sub

For assistance with the macro, see http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm.

If you want to get rid of all headers and footers, just delete them manually as Graham suggested. Or you could use the following macro to get rid of all headers and footers in one step:

Sub DeleteHeadersAndFooters()
Dim s As Section
For Each s In ActiveDocument.Sections
s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterEvenPages).Range.Text = ""
s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterFirstPage).Range.Text = ""
s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).Range.Text = ""

s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterEvenPages).Range.Text = ""
s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterFirstPage).Range.Text = ""
s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).Range.Text = ""
Next s
End Sub

For assistance with the macro, see http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm.

I have no idea how to do this.  Thought I could navigate my way thru, because I am no dummy with computers, but this is not working.  Have not worked with macros before.

Also, Graham's solution did not work.  I have been choosing "remove header" and "remove footer" followed by "next header/footer" or "previous header/footer" the entire week, and nothing works to completely get rid of these headers and footers.  There is really essentially nothing in them; they are empty, but there is a shaded paragraph marker on my pages, top and bottom, which indicate to me that they are there and need to go!  It is really messing up the rest of the document, as it moves other things that ideally there should be room on the page for, except for these stupid empty headers and footers.

Please help!  I can e-mail a copy of the file to someone if they think they want to look at it and see what I am doing wrong.

:(

If you activate the header/footer view by double-clicking the header, as Graham suggested, you can delete header and footer content manually (by selecting it and pressing the Delete button); that will always work (as opposed to using the Remove commands).

In order to run the macro, just do the following: From within Word, press Alt+F11 to display the Visual Basic Editor. Click View | Project Explorer. Click the Normal project and click Insert | Module. Paste in the code above. On the Debug menu, click Compile Normal. Click the Save button and close the Visual Basic Editor. You can run the macro via the Macros dialog box (Alt+F8). Make sure the problem document is the active document when you run it.

Nope - They are still there!  (and I followed your instructions for the macro precisely).  The other method doesn't work either-deleting them does not remove them, and appears to do nothing.

:(

Guess I might have to just re-create the entire document (again), and I am no closer to understanding why this happens, which was my objective, so that I can prevent it happening in the future.

Just a note, that I am noticing that when the headers and footers arbitrarily appear in the document, it changes my "breaks" on the previous page.  For instance, I have a list (prayer list), which is a bulleted list inside of a header line of text, for which I want to break into two columns, so that (only) this list is side by side.  I have been using "continuous" breaks both before and after the bulleted list, then choosing "page layout", "columns", selecting "two" for only the bulleted section.  Then normally if I choose continuous section break after that, it SHOULD keep the text following that (one columned text) on the same page.

However, when these header and footer lines appear, it also arbitrarily changed those "continous" breaks to "section page" breaks.  WHY is this happening?  And how can I keep it from changing my breaks and page breaks around on me, substituting what I put there with something different entirely?

I really think this header/footer problem I am having is very closely related to how I am using "breaks" in my document, but again, I have read all the help screens and done all the tutorials on how to properly use breaks of various kinds, and once again, it changes them on me.

Any further help would be most appreciated.  Thank you.

I misunderstood your post: I thought you couldn't get rid of the text in the headers and footers. But if the problem is with a remaining paragraph mark, hiding it, as Pam suggested, should do the trick.