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Home > Microsoft Excel > How to Add a Watermark in Excel? 2 Easy Methods

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. 

Table Of Contents
  1. What Is a Watermark? 
  2. How to Add a Watermark in Excel? 
  3. Insert a Watermark in Excel Using WordArt
  4. Insert a Watermark in Excel Using the Header & Footer Option
    • How to Reposition a Watermark in Excel? 
    • How to Resize a Watermark in Excel? 
    • How to Delete or Replace a Watermark in Excel? 
  5. Closing Thoughts

Related:

How to Use the Format Painter Excel Feature? — 3 Bonus Tips

How to Indent in Excel? 3 Easy Methods

How to Add Subscript in Excel? (6 Best Methods)

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. 

A sample watermark in Excel
A sample watermark in Excel

They are still in vogue for mainly three reasons:

  1. Watermarks protect the copyright of your document by ensuring that it cannot be reused or altered without your permission. 
  1. 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. 
  1. 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:

  1. Using WordArt
  2. Using the Header & Footer Design option

We’ll discuss these methods in greater detail below. 

Also Read:

How to Apply the Accounting Number Format in Excel? (3 Best methods)

How to Enable Excel Dark Mode? 3 Simple Steps

The FORMULATEXT Excel Function – 2 Best Examples

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: 

  1. After opening your Excel sheet, go to the View tab and click on Page Layout. 
Switch to the Page Layout view in the View tab
Switch to the Page Layout view in the View tab
  1. Under the Insert tab, inside the Text group, select the WordArt option. 
Click on WordArt under the Text option of the Insert tab
Click on WordArt under the Text option of the Insert tab
  1. Select a suitable WordArt Style and type the text you want to appear as a watermark. 
  1. Format the font details including its colour, size, angle, etc. as per your requirements. You can also drag the WordArt to any suitable location. 
Format the Shape, Size, Alignment, Position and Colour of your WordArt as per your requirements
Format the Shape, Size, Alignment, Position and Colour of your WordArt as per your requirements

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: 

  1. After opening your Excel sheet, go to the Insert tab and click on the Text section drop-down button. 
  1. 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 the Header & Footer under the Text option of the Insert tab
Click on the Header & Footer under the Text option of the Insert tab
  1. 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. 
Select any one of these boxes to place the watermark in left, right or centre positions
Select any one of these boxes to place the watermark in left, right or centre positions
Click on the Picture option from the Header & Footer Elements group
Click on the Picture option from the Header & Footer Elements group
  1. Locate and select the picture of the logo or watermark on your desktop. This will add the picture as a watermark to your spreadsheet.
Locate and select the watermark saved on your Desktop
Locate and select the watermark saved on your Desktop
  1.  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. 
The &Picture message indicates that a watermark is inserted at this location.
The &Picture message indicates that a watermark is inserted at this location.
  1. 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

Go the Normal view by clicking on View tab > Workbook Views > Normal
Go to the Normal view by clicking on 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. 

Add line breaks before the &Picture message to reposition the watermark
Add line breaks before the &Picture message to reposition the watermark

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: 

  1. 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
  1. This will make the Header & Footer Design Tools tab appear in the ribbon. Under it, click on the Format Picture option. 
Click on the Format Picture option under the Header & Footer design tools tab
Click on the Format Picture option under the Header & Footer design tools tab
  1. In the Format Picture window, change the height and the width of your watermark as per your requirements and click OK. 
Change the dimensions and rotation of your Watermark as per your requirements and click OK
Change the dimensions and rotation 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. 

Suggested Reads:

How to Autofit Excel Cells? 3 Best Methods

How to Extract an Excel Substring? – 6 Best Methods

How to Shade Every Other Row in Excel? (5 Best Methods)

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. 

Need more high-quality Excel guides? Check out our free Excel resources centre.

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!

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