Go to View, and uncheck Header and Footer so that you can leave the Header and Footer area and start editing your text area. Your letterhead design should now appear at 100%. Now hit ok to apply all these picture formatting adjustments. Click the “Advanced” button and make sure the Horizontal and Vertical Absolute positions are set to Page. Next, click on the Layout tab, and select the “Behind the text” option. First, go to Size.Word automatically scales down your artwork, but you can fix that by setting the height and width to 100%. Select the png image, click Format > Picture.Ī “Format Picture” menu will pop up. png file will appear centered in the middle of the page. Click Insert > Photo > Picture from File.

Now some guidelines for headers and footers will show up on the document. Your letterhead design is going to be placed into the Header and Footer section of your Word document, which will automatically repeat on all additional pages. Place your letterhead design into your Microsoft Word document Set the paper size to 8.75 x 11.13 to accommodate your full bleed design, set all the margins to “0”, and set the Non-Printable Areas to “User Defined.” Doing this lets you set up your letterhead as a full bleed instead of conforming to Word’s default margins. While the document opens, click File > Page Setup > Paper Size > Manage Custom Sizes. Next, set up a Word document to insert your letterhead design into. You can also save your design as a JPG and even as a TIFF however TIFF files will dramatically increase files size and loading times in Microsoft Word for your client.

Make sure you select 300 ppi as the resolution. Export your letterhead design as a high res PNG file There’s a great full-bleed letterhead template that you can download here. We’re using a full bleed design in this example with a 1/8″ bleed, which will give s us a document that is about 8.63 x 11.13 inches.Ĭreate your design in CMYK color mode, and if you’re using photos or complex graphics make sure that they 300ppi or higher, because Microsoft Word compresses all images that you place into it. We’ve created this example in Illustrator, but Photoshop and InDesign can be used to create letterhead designs too. Microsoft Word is pretty low-tech compared to Illustrator or InDesign however, that’s what your clients are using and your letterhead design is useless to them if they can’t edit and add content to it, so knowing how to create a Microsoft Word letterhead template is key. At the end of a letterhead design project, it’s pretty common to hear your client say: “I want this as an editable letterhead template in Microsoft Word.” They usually don’t own or know how to use advanced graphics-editing programs like Adobe Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop, and it simply doesn’t make sense for them to purchase those expensive programs.

Header designs for word documents