In the physical real world a watermark has historically been added to paper based documents to provide a guarantee of authenticity and aid in copy prevention.
This has been carried forward into the digital age, and watermarks are used for a variety of purposes, ranging from identifying ‘Draft’ documents through to the assertion of originality and author rights.
Microsoft Word 2010 makes the application of watermarks in your document a breeze.
- Open the document you wish to apply a watermark to.
- Click the Page Layout tab from the Ribbon
- Click the Watermark option – you will be presented with a set of pre-defined watermarks that you can scroll through.
- Select the watermark you wish to use.
- If there is not a pre-defined watermark that suits your purpose then you can select the ‘Custom Watermark’ option to use your own text, or even a picture if you want.
Also, within the ‘Custom Watermark’ option are various settings that allow you to define fonts, colours, visibility etc for your watermark – just be careful not to go over the top, and make your watermark the focus of your document rather than a background feature.