How do I get the document path and filename printed in the footer of my Word documents?

Question:

In Word Perfect, there was an option to insert the path to where the
document was stored into the footer of the document, which was printed at the
bottom. Is there any way to do this in Microsoft Word? Thanks!

In this excerpt from Answercast #88 I look at the terminology Microsoft uses
to insert special information, or “fields”, into documents.

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Printing the document path in Word

Absolutely, there is. In fact I daresay that there are probably more things in Microsoft than there ever were in Word Perfect – but that’s just being somewhat Word-centric.

The concept you need to look for is something called “fields”.

What you want to do is go down to the footer of your document; edit the footer of your document; and use “insert field.” You’ll get a list of a bunch of different things that you can insert. Everything from the author’s name, to the page number, to the date, to the save date, to the print date, to just about anything you can think of. One of those things will, in fact, be the document path.

Look for Fields

The concept here is simply one of terminology.

The thing that you want to look for, potentially, in the Word Help information is this concept of fields – because that’s the terminology they use to refer to these programmatic entities that you can insert into your document. Not just in the footer but pretty much anywhere.

(Transcript lightly edited for readability.)

Next from Answercast 88- Should I get Outlook or just use Windows Live Mail?

4 comments on “How do I get the document path and filename printed in the footer of my Word documents?”

Leo uses the term “document path”, but that’s not the actual name of the field to look for – it is “File name”. For example, in my version of “Word 2007”, assuming you already have the header/footer section of a page open, on the Design tab, under “QuickParts”, select the “Field” menu choice. Find the field named “File Name” (you may have to change the Categories choice field to “All” or “Document Information” for “File Name” to appear in the “Field names” list).

If you indeed want the entire document path (i.e., file name and folder location, which I find helpful and use all the time), in the right-most pane’s “Field options” choice list, select the “Add path to filename”.

Thank you for the accurate “Word 2007” clarification Dan G.

Your comment “that there are probably more things in Microsoft than there ever were in Word Perfect” may be true today (although I have never used a Windows version of WP-I still prefer to use WP5.1 for DOS at home), but that statement was definitely not true many years ago. I had an entire list of things that Word didn’t do that WP5.1 (yes, 5.1 for DOS) could do. Although I’ve been using Word for a very long time now and more-or-less have it mastered, one thing that was so simple in WP – indents – is no quite so simple in Word. It’s just somethingI’ve never been able to grasp. Also, I have always found help in MS products to be truly awful.

Word 2010 is the same: Edit Footer, Quick Parts, Fields…scroll down the list and select FileName, etc.

How do I get the document path and filename printed in the footer of my Word documents?

Printing the document path in Word

Look for Fields

Do this

4 comments on “How do I get the document path and filename printed in the footer of my Word documents?”

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