Headers and Footers for Printed Documents Are Here

Before I get started with the new features added to Google Docs, I would like to make it clear that I do not use them on a regular basis, only to try out the new features and perhaps when I'm on a hurry or not at my computer. I am, however, up-to-date with everything going on with the Docs and Spreadsheets.

Now that this is out of the way, the long-awaited work on the printing features has finally started to show some results: the Headers and Footers that people have been asking for ever since… forever have been included in the latest update. They are easily accessible and predictably included under the "Insert" tab. A box surrounded by dashed lines will appear and anything that you place in that box will be repeated on each and every page of the printed document. Bells and whistles (Deepak Jindal's words in the blog entry announcing it) is little to be said about what accompanies this addition of features, it's more like a parade with a huge fanfare and elephants playing the banjo.

Despite the hype and the obvious improvement of user experience, it's really not that big a deal. Still no support for pagination is available, so no additional information about the number of pages in the header or footer can be added. As a matter of fact, there's no way to insert any dynamic content to a Google Document.

As a bonus feature, trying to print any such Document will have you watch with your eyeballs popping out the way it is exported as a PDF, without any mention of that, or by adding a link to a PDF reader, only then will you be given the option to add page numbers… if that doesn't create a conflict with the headers and footers inserted, that is, as Ionut ALex. Chitu noticed.