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Microsoft Excel: Including an ‘&’ in headers and footers

By J. Carlton Collins, CPA

Please note: This item is from our archives and was published in 2018. It is provided for historical reference. The content may be out of date and links may no longer function.

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Q. I can’t figure out why the ampersand does not show up when I enter our firm name “Baldwin & Babbage, CPAs” in the Excel header. I’ve tried using quotation marks, but that doesn’t work. Any suggestions?

A. In Excel’s custom headers and footers box, the ampersand character (&) is used as a marker to indicate that a special formatting code follows. For example, inserting the characters &[Date]&[Time] will display the date and time when the workbook is printed in the Excel header or footer. To display an ampersand in your Excel header or footer, type two of them into Excel’s custom header or custom footer box, as pictured below. The resulting header will display only one ampersand as pictured in the second screenshot below.

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About the author

J. Carlton Collins (carlton@asaresearch.com) is a technology consultant, a conference presenter, and a JofA contributing editor.

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