Draft Watermark in excel
Microsoft Excel does not come with an inbuilt feature to create a watermark in excel. Whether you want to place the word DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL or any other word on all printed pages from an excel spreadsheet, you will need to trick Excel into doing this.
The best way to do this is by using the custom header option.
First thing you must do is create a picture (jpeg, gif etc) of the word/s you want to use. Remember to make it a light colour so that the normal text can be seen (lower down we show how you can easily create this picture using Excel and Word).
Save this picture file in a convenient place.
Then go to your excel spreadsheet and
- click on PAGE LAYOUT, then PAGE SETUP and then HEADER AND FOOTER.
- Click on CUSTOM HEADER and choose the middle section.
- Click on the INSERT PICTURE button ( dull yellow colour with a mountain image)
- Go and find the picture you created above. When you click on it it will say &[Picture] in the block.
- Now click before the & and hit enter as many times as you need (this is an experimental section as you may need to go to the print preview to see if it is in the right place). Keep doing this until you are happy.
Once you are happy with the placement your document will always print with this watermark on all that wordsheets pages.
Make picture in Excel for the background
If you are not comfortable making the watermark image in other programs you can make use of Excel and Word, which should already be loaded on your computer.
Steps as as follows:
In Excel
- Under the INSERT tab, click on the WORD ART option.
- Choose the appropriate image (remember that light colours will work best)
- Change the orientation if you want it to be shown as an angle
- You can right click on the image and change various options e.g. colour, transparency etc
- Copy this image and switch over to Microsoft Word
In Word
- In a blank document, click on the Paste Special option (under the HOME tab) and Paste as a picture.
- Now right click on this picture and choose the option to ‘Save as a picture’
- Choose the file type you want to use (JPEG or GIF is good) and save it somewhere convenient
- Now follow the steps at the top of this page on how to create the watermark in excel