In each of the headers (first page and primary) of each section after the
first, click the Same As Previous button on the Header/Footer toolbar to
remove that notation from the upper right corner of the dashed box. That
unlinks the section headers so they can differ.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

wrote:
I routinely work with long documents with mutliptle
sections. I want to have a separate header for each
section and for each section, the header on the first
page is blank.

I set this up by creating section breaks withtin the
document. Within each section, I choose View/Header/Page
Set Up/Layout/Different first page so that the first page
of each section is blank. I have found that if I edit a
given header in a given section, that change is made for
the entire document across all the sections.
Any suggestions so that I can edit the header in only one
section at a time?
Thanks.