First and Last Names in a Page Header

David is administering an election for a professional society and the roster of eligible voters is a worksheet. There are approximately 1,200 eligible voters, so the printout is over twenty pages long. David has a footer with the page number—which is helpful—but it would be great if he could have, in the header of each page, the first name on the page and the last name on the page.

In Excel there is no native way to do this. It is a relative snap to do in Word, however, so one solution is to paste the sorted names into a Word document and then add the desired header that shows the names. (In Word you would format the last names using a unique style of your choosing and then use the STYLEREF field in the page header to insert names.) While this can work, it becomes a pain to make sure that the Word version of the list is always in sync with the Excel version of the list, and vice-versa.

If you decide you want to keep a single version of the voter list in Excel, the best way to approach the problem is to use a macro to insert the first and last names in the header. The code for such a macro, obviously, would need to be tailored to the layout of the data in your worksheet. The following macro assumes that the names are in columns A through C, with the last names (the ones you want to use for the headers) are in column C.

Sub PrintNamesInHeader()
    Dim iPages As Integer
    Dim iPage As Integer
    Dim iHorPgs As Integer
    Dim iHP As Integer
    Dim iHPNext As Integer
    Dim iCol As Integer
    Dim iColLast As Integer
    Dim lRow As Long
    Dim lRowLast As Long
    Dim sPrtArea As String

    iCol = 1        'Col A
    iColLast = 3    'Col C
    With ActiveSheet
        iPages = ExecuteExcel4Macro("Get.Document(50)")
        iHorPgs = .HPageBreaks.Count + 1
        sPrtArea = .PageSetup.PrintArea

        For iPage = 1 To iPages
            iHP = ((iPage - 1) Mod iHorPgs)
            iHPNext = iHP + 1
            If iHP = 0 Then
                If sPrtArea = "" Then
                    lRow = 1
                Else
                    lRow = .Range(sPrtArea).Cells(1).Row
                End If
            Else
                lRow = .HPageBreaks(iHP).Location.Row
            End If
            If iHPNext > .HPageBreaks.Count Then
                lRowLast = .Cells(lRow, iColLast).End(xlDown).Row
            Else
                lRowLast = .HPageBreaks(iHPNext).Location.Row - 1
            End If
            .PageSetup.LeftHeader = .Cells(lRow, iCol).Value & _
              " - " & .Cells(lRowLast, iColLast)
            .PrintOut From:=iPage, To:=iPage, preview:=True
        Next
    End With
End Sub

When you run the macro, it steps through each page of the worksheet. The headers are set for the page, then the single page is printed, and then the next page is examined and processed.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (9543) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: First and Last Names in a Page Header.