How to Add a Watermark in Excel

Here is a tutorial on how to add a watermark in Microsoft Excel. While Excel doesn’t provide any direct option to insert watermarks into your workbooks, you can still watermark an Excel sheet. There are some steps you need to perform in order to do so. In this guide, I am going to discuss two ways to add a watermark in Excel. Let’s get started!

How to Add a Watermark in Excel

There are two methods to insert a watermark in Microsoft Excel including:

Add a Watermark using a picture file
Create and then add a watermark

Let’s discuss these methods in detail!

1] Add a Watermark using a picture file

You can add a watermark to an Excel workbook using your own picture. It can be a stamp, your logo image, or any image that you want to use to watermark an Excel file. Let’s check out the steps for inserting a watermark using this method.

Firstly, open your workbook and go to the Insert tab. From here, click on the Text > Header & Footer option.

Now, a Header & Footer tab will appear on the Excel ribbon. Go to it and click on the Picture option.

Next, browse and import the watermark image from your PC, Bing Image Search, or your OneDrive storage.

This will add an &[Picture] code to the header. Simply click anywhere on the sheet and your watermark image will appear in the workbook.

Now, if you want to put the watermark image at the centre of the workbook, simply place the cursor before &[Picture] code and press Enter button repeatedly.

Now, click on the sheet and you will see your watermark appearing at about the centre of your Excel workbook.

2] Create and then add a Watermark in Excel

You can also create a new watermark image in Excel and then add it to the workbook. Let’s say you want to add a stamp as a watermark like Confidential, Draft, Approved, or anything else. You can use the WordArt feature and create your own watermark which you can insert into an Excel sheet. Let’s see a step by step procedure to do so.

First, go to the Insert tab and click on the Text drop-down button. Now, click on the WordArt drop-down button and choose the desired WordArt to add to the Excel sheet.

After that, click on the WordArt to enter and customize your text. You can repeat the same text in new lines to emphasize it.

When done, right-click on the WordArt box and from the context menu, press the Save as Picture option and save the picture at any location on your PC. You can choose the desired image format from PNG, JPG, SVG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP.

Now, go to the Insert tab and add Text > Header & Footer. And then, from the Header & Footer tab, click on the Picture option to add a watermark image.

Browse the watermark image that you just created and import it from your PC. It will then be added to the header as a watermark.

How to format watermark imagein Excel

If you want to format your watermark image, select the image and go to the Header & Footer tab. Now, click on the Format Picture option to open up various watermark customization options. These are the options:

You can resize the watermark image.
It lets you crop a watermark image.
You can also apply a few colouring effects to the watermark image. For example, if you don’t want to emphasize the watermark too much, you can use the Washout effect. Similarly, you can adjust the brightness and contrast of the image.
It also provides an option to compress the watermark image.