How do I set padding between the top of the footer and footer content in Microsoft Word?

Question

While setting up a template, I tried copying content from the footer of another document to mine, but noticed the footer height was different, even though the "Footer from Bottom" distance was the same. The document I copied from had padding between the top of the footer section and the footer text:

But my document has no padding:

I want padding so there is space between the main text and the footer, but I can't figure out how to do that. Changing "Footer from Bottom" just moves everything up or down from the bottom.

Answer 1

Hi @Anonymous

I want to confirm does the same issue occur if the footer of the even-numbered pages in your document?

Please make sure the margins of these documents are same.

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Answer 2

You can add some Spacing Before (Paragraph dialog box) to the first paragraph in the footer.

Answer 3

Stan's method will work. Other alternatives include adding an extra carriage return above the existing footer text, or placing the footer text into a table that has an extra row above the text.

Answer 4

Thank you both for responding.

I know I could change the content to achieve the same effect. But I wanted to understand why the content I copied didn't present the same way in my document as it did in the original -- if there were a way to set the height of the footer or change its padding. The paragraph I copied has zero paragraph spacing and no carriage return before it, yet there is space between it and the footer division line. Why?

Plus, I need to create a template from this. Since different people have different needs, it's better to design it so it won't need workarounds. The padding needs to change. Is there a way to do it?

Answer 5

Thanks for responding. The footers were the same on even/odd pages. (Both documents used the same footer throughout.)

I thought I had matched the margins, but when I checked I noticed they were different (2 cm (mine) vs 2.6 cm (original)). Changing the margin did create extra space between the footer division and the top of my content. Mystery solved.

But I would like to know why changing the margin made a difference. Normally the bottom margin sets the distance between the bottom of the text and the bottom of the page, but Word has a different setting for that (Footer from Bottom). So what exactly does the margin set in this context?