How can I duplicate my existing letterhead in Word?

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Summary: Many businesses have existing paper stationery that they'd like to have available directly in a word processor. Unfortunately converting's not easy.

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Possible? Yes. Easy? Not really.

I've done it once or twice, and my approach has always been a little time consuming, though once done I have exactly what I want.

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There are two ways I can think of off-hand to do what you're looking for.

Scan

If you scan an existing piece of stationery, you can then set the resulting graphic as the background or "watermark". As we'll see in a moment, this may not always yield acceptable results, but it's an option.

Once you've scanned your document, in Word go to the Format menu, Background item, and Printed Watermark... sub item. Click on Picture and unclick Washout. Now use the Select Picture button to locate and load the stationery image you just scanned.

Now the fun starts. Much of this will be dependant on the specifics of your stationery, but you may now need to experiment with:

• margins

• scaling

• transparency / washout

• probably several other things

If this works for you, as complicated as it is, it might be the easiest of the two approaches.

However, if you can't get it quite right, or you need more explicit control over exactly what goes where, or if you ever need to make even the smallest change to your stationery, the next approach might be more appropriate.

Recreate

The approach I took when I needed to recreate my dad's stationery was to carefully and meticulously recreate it in Word by hand. That means I had to find matching fonts and retype the textual information on the letterhead. Then I spent time adjusting the spacing around all the elements of the letterhead until when printed it matched the original paper version.

All in all a bit of work, but the result was a near perfect match that I then saved as a document template in Word. Now when I need to create a new document on his letterhead, I can just select it from the available templates and off I go.

I've duplicated the look of other paper documents in this same fashion. It's tedious, but so far it's generated the best results for me.

Now, I will say that I was "lucky" in that my fathers letterhead was all text based. This get a little more dicey if graphics are involved, or if the letterhead/stationery is complex.

It's all still quite possible, just more work.

Find a "Word Jockey"

Depending on your own familiarity with Word or Word Perfect, this might also be one of those cases where finding someone who is intimately familiar with either of those two programs to do it for you might be a reasonable option. Much of the trial and error and tweaking in either scenario above relies heavily on knowing how best to perform those operations in your word processing programs to get the best results.

Sometimes finding that someone, someone I sometimes call a "Word Jockey" because they know all the ins and outs of the program, to do it for you is the quickest solution of all.

Well, next to deciding that it's time for a new design and having it created in your word processor from the start.

By the way, if readers have any good tips for converting existing paper stationery to a Word template, feel free to add it to the comments below. It's not an uncommon scenario.

Related:

• Ask Leo! - Why does my Microsoft Word document display differently on different computers?

• Ask Leo! - How do I convert a Word document into a PDF file?

• Ask Leo! - Why are my revisions visible when I send out a Word document?

Article C2962 - March 14, 2007