Letterhead in Word: Every Method Compared (and What Actually Prints)
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There are four ways people put a letterhead in Word — and three of them fail somewhere between the screen and the printer. Here’s the whole field in one table, and the one method that survives typing, printing, and page 2.
What are the four ways to put letterhead in Word?
A locked image in the document header, an image pasted into the body, a picture watermark, and a page background. They look similar on screen; they behave nothing alike the moment someone types a letter or hits Print.
| Prints at full strength | Every page | Safe from stray clicks | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Locked header image | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Image pasted in the body | Yes | No — only where it’s pasted | No — it drags and deletes mid-letter |
| Picture watermark | No — Word washes it out by design | Yes | Yes |
| Page background | No — screen-only until a print setting is ticked | Yes | Yes |
The failures each have their own story: printing problems are covered in letterhead disappears when you print, and the body-image mess is why Canva letterheads jump around when pasted straight in.
Which method actually works?
The locked header image — artwork anchored in the header layer, sized to the full page. It prints by default at full strength, repeats identically on every page, and can’t be clicked, moved, or deleted while anyone types. That’s the file WordLetterhead builds from the design you already have:
- Upload your letterhead — PDF, PNG, or JPG.
- Drag the typing area over the space the design left open — it becomes the Word margins.
- Download the .docx and start typing.
About two minutes, no account. And no, converting the PDF to Word isn’t a shortcut to the same place.
What does a header-image letterhead handle that the others don’t?
The everyday stuff: page 2 looks like page 1 automatically, the design survives other people editing the letter, and first-page-only letterhead is one checkbox instead of a rebuild. The other three methods each need a workaround for at least one of those — the header layer needs none. (Tempted to build that header file by hand? Here’s what DIY actually takes.)
Common questions
- Isn’t a Word template (.dotx) the proper way to do letterhead?
- A template changes how the file opens — a fresh document each time — not how the letterhead behaves. The artwork inside still has to live somewhere, and everything in the comparison applies: a .dotx with a pasted body image fails exactly like a .docx with one.
- Why does the header image look faded while I type?
- Word dims header artwork on screen to show it’s inactive while you edit the body. It’s a display effect only — the printed page comes out at full strength.
- Can I just paste my logo at the top of the letter?
- That’s the most common shortcut — and the reason so many letterheads end up mangled. A body image only exists where you pasted it, shifts as text is added, and gets dragged or deleted by the next person who edits the file. Reused letterhead belongs in the locked header, which is exactly how a WordLetterhead file is built.
- Do these methods behave the same on Mac and Windows?
- Yes. Headers, watermarks, and page backgrounds are core Word features that work the same way on both — including the print settings that keep backgrounds from printing by default.