Headers & footers

Headers and footers render on every page exactly where Word puts them, and they are edited in place. There is no separate header dialog: double-click the header or footer area and type.

Editing

Double-click inside the header or footer band to enter edit mode. From there, editing follows the same model as the document body: click to place the caret, drag to select, double- and triple-click for word and paragraph selection, right-click menus, hyperlinks, image selection, and table row, column, and edge resize all work identically. Undo and redo cover header and footer edits.

While editing, a separator bar labels the region (Header or Footer) and shows an Options menu:

• Insert current page number inserts a PAGE field.
• Insert total page count inserts a NUMPAGES field.
• Remove header/footer clears the region.

Press Escape or click the close action to save and leave header/footer editing.

PAGE and NUMPAGES fields

Page-number fields are stored as real Word fields, not baked-in text. The page view renders the resolved value on each page (page 3 of a 10-page document shows "3" and "10"), values update as the document reflows, and the fields round-trip to OOXML so Word keeps them live.

A "Page X of Y" footer is the two inserts with literal text between them: type Page , insert the page number, type of, insert the total page count.

Per-section headers and footers

The OOXML model attaches header and footer references to sections, and the editor honors it:

• Each section can reference default, first, and even header and footer parts (w:headerReference / w:footerReference).
• Different first page (w:titlePg) shows the first variant on a section's first page. Typical use: no header on a title page.
• Different odd and even pages (w:evenAndOddHeaders) alternates default and even variants, as in book-style layouts.
• Sections without their own references inherit from earlier sections, matching Word's "link to previous" behavior.

Documents using any of these render and round-trip correctly; editing a header edits the specific part the page displays.

Watermarks

Watermarks live in headers (that is how Word models them) and render behind the body content on every page.

In the editor

Insert → Watermark opens a dialog with three states:

• No watermark removes the current one.
• Text watermark: preset (like DRAFT or CONFIDENTIAL) or custom text, font, size (or Auto), color, diagonal or horizontal layout, and a semitransparent toggle.
• Picture watermark: pick an image, set scale, and optionally apply washout.

Watermarks in opened documents render as Word shows them, and edits round-trip to valid OOXML. Sections with first-page or even-page headers get the watermark there too: missing header parts are created without disturbing existing header inheritance, and picture watermarks keep their aspect ratio.

Headless

getDocumentWatermark and setDocumentWatermark from @eigenpal/docx-editor-core/headless read and write the same model:

import { parseDocx, setDocumentWatermark, repackDocx } from "@eigenpal/docx-editor-core/headless";

let doc = await parseDocx(buffer);

doc = setDocumentWatermark(doc, {
  kind: "text",
  text: "DRAFT",
  font: "Calibri",
  color: "#C0C0C0",
  layout: "diagonal",
  semitransparent: true,
});

// or remove it
doc = setDocumentWatermark(doc, null);

const out = await repackDocx(doc);

The Watermark type is a union of TextWatermark (kind: 'text', with text, font, fontSize?, color, layout, semitransparent) and PictureWatermark (kind: 'picture', with image data, scale, washout).

Next steps

• Architecture for how header/footer editing shares the body's editing model
• Loading and saving for the save pipeline that round-trips these parts
• Headless processing for server-side watermark stamping