We communicate results on correlation functions for the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain in two particularly important cases: (a) for the infinite chain at arbitrary finite temperature T, and (b) for finite chains of arbitrary length L in the ground state. In both cases we present explicit formulas expressing the short-range correlators in a range of up to seven lattice sites in terms of a single function ω encoding the dependence of the correlators on T (L). These formulas allow us to obtain accurate numerical values for the correlators and derived quantities like the entanglement entropy. By calculating the low T (large L) asymptotics of ω we show that the asymptotics of the static correlation functions at any finite distance are T(2) (1/L(2)) terms. We obtain exact and explicit formulas for the coefficients for up to eight sites.