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I have a letterhead designed. It's in Adobe Illustrator (AI), PDF, PNG, and EPS, formats.

I am trying to create a template for MS Word using the letterhead as the background image.

When I use the option to set a background image in word it uses the correct image, but stretches it a lot. The letterhead is 8.5" x 11", but when I set it as the background image in Word it only shows a part of it and most of it is cut off because Word increases the image size so much.

Any ideas?

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Cut the header and footer out of the letterhead into their own, separate graphic files.

Insert the header graphic into Word's "Header" section, and insert the footer graphic into Word's "Footer" section.

Adjust the inserted graphics' positioning and dimensions as desired.

More info on Headers and Footers in Word

Example (Word 2013) of a gradient + graphical text image (PNG) inserted into the footer, as described above:

Word 2013 with gradient image in footer

The Image was formatted to place itself "Behind text" to make positioning it easier. I was able to resize and adjust it freely, so the aspect ratio could easily be maintained.

Here it is with some text in the body, which has had its "Shading" (Borders and Shading) set to "No Color" so the text background is transparent:

Word with gradient background foot and text

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  • That was my original thought, except that the letterhead has a slight gradient image that covers the bottom half of the page, so I don't think this would work properly.
    – Sherwin Flight
    May 8, 2014 at 16:42
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    @SherwinFlight I edited my answer to include an example showing that it works as described. :)
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    May 8, 2014 at 16:58
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    "but then there's only a very small portion of the page that you can actually type on.", and you formatted the picture you inserted and chose it's text-alignment to be "Behind text"? What version of Word are you using?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    May 8, 2014 at 17:59
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    @SherwinFlight "to the line in the middle of the page", that sounds like you're hitting the top of the image because you didn't format it to be "Behind Text". I've asked a couple times now but haven't gotten an answer -- Did you actually do that?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    May 8, 2014 at 19:11
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    I did try that, and it still didn't work. I closed Word, and started completely from scratch again and it worked the way you said. Setting it to "behind text" worked and solved the problem. Marking this answer as correct. Thanks for the help techie007 :)
    – Sherwin Flight
    May 10, 2014 at 1:56

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