How to Add a Watermark in Excel? 2 Easy Methods
Note: This tutorial on how to add a watermark in Excel is suitable for all Excel versions including Office 365.
Watermarks are ubiquitous nowadays. You have probably come across more watermarks than you realize. You can spot them in a wide variety of documents ranging from stock images on Google to academic research papers.
Watermarking in general is very useful in protecting proprietary data. Besides, it also helps you brand your documents with a unique logo. It is a very important element of your document.
In this guide, you will learn more about watermarks and how to add them in Excel.
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What Is a Watermark?
A watermark is a superimposed logo or text on top of an existing document (images, videos, text files, spreadsheets, etc.). The word ‘watermarking’ dates back centuries when people used to mark their documents after wetting them with water.
They are still in vogue for mainly three reasons:
- Watermarks protect the copyright of your document by ensuring that it cannot be reused or altered without your permission.
- Watermarks can also be used as a branding tool, just like an artist’s signature. Hence, whenever your document is shared over the internet, your company’s brand also gets promoted along with it.
- They can also be used to mark the status of a document (for example COPY, CONFIDENTIAL, SAMPLE, etc.). This will ensure that important documents are not mishandled by anyone.
How to Add a Watermark in Excel?
There isn’t any specific tool to add watermarks in Excel. But, that should not stop us from adding them to our spreadsheets.
You can still add them by following one of these two methods:
- Using WordArt
- Using the Header & Footer Design option
We’ll discuss these methods in greater detail below.
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Insert a Watermark in Excel Using WordArt
This is the easiest way to add watermarks if you don’t have a logo or image ready in the first place.
Follow these steps to insert watermarks using WordArt:
- After opening your Excel sheet, go to the View tab and click on Page Layout.
- Under the Insert tab, inside the Text group, select the WordArt option.
- Select a suitable WordArt Style and type the text you want to appear as a watermark.
- Format the font details including its colour, size, angle, etc. as per your requirements. You can also drag the WordArt to any suitable location.
You have successfully added a watermark to your worksheet using WordArt. You can now print this sheet along with the watermark if needed.
Insert a Watermark in Excel Using the Header & Footer Option
If you already have a watermark logo or image ready, you can use the Header & Footer option to add it immediately to your Excel sheet.
Just follow these steps:
- After opening your Excel sheet, go to the Insert tab and click on the Text section drop-down button.
- Under the drop-down list, select the Header & Footer option. This will take you to the page layout view with headers and footers sections. You will also notice that there are three boxes in the header section.
- Click on any of these three boxes and select the Picture option under the Header & Footer Design tools tab in the ribbon section. For example, if you need to add the watermark in the centre, choose the box in the middle.
- Locate and select the picture of the logo or watermark on your desktop. This will add the picture as a watermark to your spreadsheet.
- Please note that the actual image will not be displayed here. Instead, a “&Picture” message will appear to indicate that a watermark has been inserted.
- Click on any cell in the Excel sheet to see the watermark image.
Keep in mind that you can add only one watermark image at a time to one of the three boxes in the header section.
Also, even after inserting the watermark image, Excel will still remain in the Page Layout view. You have to manually switch back to the normal view by going to the View tab > Workbook Views > Normal
In the normal view, the inserted watermark will not be visible. Don’t worry, it always remains inserted in your worksheet. But, you can view it only in the Page Layout view and the printed copies.
How to Reposition a Watermark in Excel?
If you want to reposition the watermark in your sheet, just add some line breaks before the “&Picture” message. If you add enough line breaks you can push your watermark to the centre or all the way down.
How to Resize a Watermark in Excel?
As soon as you insert a watermark using the Header & Footer design option, it will be added to your sheet in its original dimensions. This may not always be suitable for your needs.
In most cases, you have to manually resize it to fit your requirements.
To do this follow these steps:
- Go to the box where you added the watermark and click on the “&Picture” message. You can access this by going to Insert > Text > Header & Footer
- This will make the Header & Footer Design Tools tab appear in the ribbon. Under it, click on the Format Picture option.
- In the Format Picture window, change the height and the width of your watermark as per your requirements and click OK.
How to Delete or Replace a Watermark in Excel?
In case you want to delete an inserted watermark, just click on the “&Picture” message and delete it from the Header section box.
In case you want to replace it with another image, click on the “&Picture” and click on the Picture option under the Header & Footer Design Tools tab. Now, locate and select the replacement image from your desktop.
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Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, I walked you through the various ways of adding a watermark in Excel. We also saw how to easily resize and reposition watermarks.
If you have any questions about this or any other Excel feature, please feel free to ask in the comments section.
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Simon Sez IT has been teaching Excel for over ten years. For a low, monthly fee you can get access to 100+ IT training courses by seasoned professionals. Click here for advanced Excel courses with in-depth training modules.
Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA. He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
