Repeat header row at the top of each page does not work as expected...

Anonymous
2013-10-27T14:55:55+00:00

I have tried to use the table properties option checkbox reading Repeat as header row at the top of each page, however, the header row just does not appear at the top of each page.

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Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2013-10-27T15:23:13+00:00

To be a repeating header row, the row must be the first row of the table (multiple rows can be selected, but they must include the first and be contiguous. (Make sure, however, that you don't have the entire table selected when you designate a row as the header row.)

In addition, the table must have text wrapping set to None (Tabletab of Table Properties).

If the table contains a manual page break, the header will not repeat. You can, however, insert a page break without breaking the table by formatting a row as "Page break before" (on the Line and Page Breaks tab of the Paragraph dialog).

Note that this applies only to tables. If you want a page header, you need to add a header to the page itself.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-10-27T15:16:54+00:00

    Hi Jon,

    You didn't supply a lot of information here.

    Did you select the first row of the table and then check that box? Are you adding rows to the table and when the next row that you add won't fit onto the page with all the other rows, are you saying your Header row does not redisplay on the next page?

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-10-27T15:29:59+00:00

    Exactly, that is what happened, this happens to be a confidential document so I cannot share it as yet.

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  3. Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2013-10-27T20:26:24+00:00

    In addition to the previous suggestions given, note that if you included a page break somewhere in the table, you have actually split the table, in which case the repeated header won't work. What you can do instead is add "Page break before" formatting to any row that should start a new page.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-12-18T18:53:47+00:00

    Adding to this discussion, even though it's a tad old:  I was having this problem, and found another answer that did the trick for me.  (courtesy of this post: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2003-word/table-header-rows-work-intermittently/569fad20-f93d-490f-afab-c3d5a2dd4aab). 

    Also, this method DID work for my Word 2010, even though this post was for Word 2003.

    1. Select the entire table (not just the first row), and UNCHECK the header row repeat checkbox. 

    (Consider this a housecleaning step.  Set aside the notion in your head that this first step shouldn't be necessary, and just do it anyway:  :-)  ) 2. Now, select just the top row, and set it to header row repeat.

    If you're lucky, this is another path to fixing the problem.

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