Can't Delete Header and Footer

This can be a bit complicated!

Each section of a Word document has three headers and three footers. Each page can have multiple sections. You may never even see most of the headers and footers. The Remove Header button only deals with the one you can see.

Here is my recap of the settings for headers and footers.

Header/Footer Settings Recap

You cannot actually remove headers and footers; they are a part of Word's document structure. You can remove any content from them other than a single empty paragraph. You can also reduce the amount of size allocated to them.

If you have headers/footers that you cannot find, you can use the following free tool:

Word Toolkit for Advanced Management of Headers and Footers

I hope this helps.

The following macro will remove everything from headers and footers in a document. You may want to use on a copy if you are unsure.

Sub HeadersFootersRemove()
' Remove all headers and Footers from a document
' Doug Robbins

' October 25, 2018
' https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/removing-headers-and-footers-from-a-word-document/5bc3a8f6-e8a1-4d58-b37f-6b120879beaf
'
    Dim i As Long, j As Long
    With ActiveDocument
        For i = 1 To .Sections.Count
            With .Sections(i)
                For j = 1 To .Headers.Count
                    .Headers(j).range.Delete
                Next j
                For j = 1 To .Footers.Count
                    .Footers(j).range.Delete
                Next j
            End With
        Next i
    End With
Exit Sub
End Sub

Installing Macros

If you send me a copy of the document, referencing this thread in the covering email message, I will investigate the issue.