How do you stop MS Word from defaulting to "Link to Previous" for headers/footers?

Hello @Susan G,

Welcome to the Q&A forum. I'm happy to assist you.

Regarding your concern, Microsoft Word does not currently offer a way to change the default behavior of "Link to Previous" when creating new sections. With current build, Word automatically links headers and footers to the previous section unless manually disabled. This includes situations where you toggle options like "Different First Page", which can re-enable the link even if you’ve previously turned it off 

The only basic workaround for now is managing it manually each time. 

1. Insert a Section Break:  Go to Layout > Breaks > Next Page to create a new section. 
2. Open the Header/Footer:  Double-click in the header or footer area of the new section. 
3. Disable "Link to Previous":  On the Header & Footer Tools | Design tab, in the Navigation group, click Link to Previous to turn it off. 
4. Repeat for Each Section:  You’ll need to do this for both headers and footers in each new section. 

For an advance workaround, you can, however, change how you add breaks into your document. If you do this via a macro, then the macro can easily turn off the Link to Previous setting for the new, added section. Here's a quick way to do it: 

Sub AddBreak()
	Dim iSec As Integer
	Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdSectionBreakNextPage

	iSec = Selection.Information(wdActiveEndSectionNumber)
	With ActiveDocument.Sections(iSec)
		.Headers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).LinkToPrevious = False
		.Headers(wdHeaderFooterEvenPages).LinkToPrevious = False
		.Headers(wdHeaderFooterFirstPage).LinkToPrevious = False
		.Footers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).LinkToPrevious = False
		.Footers(wdHeaderFooterEvenPages).LinkToPrevious = False
		.Footers(wdHeaderFooterFirstPage).LinkToPrevious = False
	End With
End Sub  

The .InsertBreak method actually inserts the break. In this case, it is a Next Page break. You can specify different types of breaks by simply changing the wdSectionBreakNextPage enumeration to one of these other types of breaks: 

• wdSectionBreakContinuous 
• wdSectionBreakEvenPage 
• wdSectionBreakOddPage 

The macro then sets iSec equal to the current section's index number. This is then used in the With structure to set the LinkToPrevious property for all three types of headers and all three types of footers. 

If you prefer, you could change the LinkToPrevious property for all the headers and footers in all sections of your document at once: 

Sub ChangeAll()
	Dim s As Section
	For Each s In ActiveDocument.Sections
		s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterEvenPages).LinkToPrevious = False
		s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterFirstPage).LinkToPrevious = False
		s.Headers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).LinkToPrevious = False
		s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterEvenPages).LinkToPrevious = False
		s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterFirstPage).LinkToPrevious = False
		s.Footers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).LinkToPrevious = False
	Next s
End Sub 

Please let me know if you have any questions related to this problem.

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