Have you ever wanted to insert an image as a background for a Microsoft Word document? Usually you would use MS Publisher for something like this but not everyone has free loads of cash to purchase a fancy flier program like Publisher.

I spent about an hour trying to figure out a way to effectively embed a picture as the background for a word 2007 document and decided to blog it in hopes to save someone else some time.

But, back to the issue at hand, we want to use an image or picture as a background in Microsoft Word. This applies to Word 2007, but it can probably accomplished with MS Word 2003 in a similar way.

• 1) Open a new document
• 2) Click on the 'Page Layout' tab
• 3) Find the 'Watermark' button and click on it
• 4) Click on 'Custom Watermark' at the bottom of the dialog box
• 5) Choose the radio dot next to 'Picture Watermark'
• 6) Choose the image you want to use
• 7) Change the size from 'auto' to whatever size you will need. (I create an image that is 8.5"x11" and set the size to 100%)
• 8) Uncheck 'Washout'
• 9) Click 'Apply' to see the changes and close to exit!

You can play with the 'size' settings and click 'Apply' to resize the image.

If you want to maintain clarity of the image, I recommend something like a .tif for the image format if you are pulling from a high end program like Adobe Illustrator.

I read somewhere else that using this method might not work the best for faxes...

Hope this helps!