Word 2007[c] The Missing Manual

3.3. Adding Page Background Features

While every document has a paper size , orientation, and margins, Word has some specialized formatting features that you'll use less frequently. You'll find the options for watermarks, page color , and borders in the middle of the Page Layout tab. These tools let you get a little fancy.

3.3.1. Adding Watermarks

A true watermark is created in a process where a water-coated metal stamp imprints a design into the paper's surface during manufacture. The design is usually a paper company's logo. The presence of a watermark can also indicate a document's authenticity. Word can't create a real watermark, but it can replicate the effect by printing one faintly on the page, seemingly beneath the text (Figure 3-6). A watermark could be your company logo, or it could be words like CONFIDENTIAL, DRAFT, or DO NOT COPY, emblazoned diagonally across the page.

Suppose you'd like to have your company logo appear as a classy watermark on your document. Using your logo picture file as a watermark takes just a few steps:

1. Go to Page Layout Page Background Watermark .

   When the Watermark menu drops down, you see a dozen predesigned watermark options. You can choose one of these options, or you can take a few more steps to customize your watermark.

2. At the bottom of the menu, click Custom Watermarks to open the Printed Watermark dialog box (Figure 3-7) .

   The Printed Watermark box has three radio button options arranged vertically: No watermark, Picture watermark, and Text watermark.

   Figure 3-7. Using the Printed Watermark box, you can brand your document with a word of your choice. Simply type it in the Text box. Use the Font, Size, Color, and Layout options to change the text's appearance.

3. Select the "Picture watermark" radio button .

   When you click one of these buttons , the appropriate fine-tuning options become available and the others fade to gray. For example, when you choose "Picture watermark," the Text watermark options are grayed out.

4. Click the Select Picture button to open the Insert Picture box .

   The Insert Picture box is a standard Windows file box. Use the buttons on the left and the "Look in" drop-down menu at the top to navigate to the folder with your logo's picture file.

5. Double-click the picture file to use it for your watermark, or, as an alternative, select your picture, and then click Insert .

   The Insert Picture box closes , and you see the More Watermarks box again. Next to the Select Picture button, you see the name of your picture file.

6. Set the Scale and Washout options .

   Now that you've chosen your picture file, you can use two more settings to make your watermark look spiffy. Use the Scale drop-down menu to adjust the size of your image so that it looks good on the page. You can choose from preset sizes of 50%, 100%, 150%, 200%, or 500%. Or you can choose the Auto setting, which scales your image to fit comfortably on the page. The Washout checkbox fades your image, making it easier to read text over the watermark.

7. Click Apply to see your watermark in action, and then click Close to finish up .

   Use the Apply button to see how your watermark will look on the printed page. If you need a better view, click the top bar of the Printed Watermark box, and then drag it out of the way. When you're happy with the results, click Close to close the Printed Watermark dialog box. Your new watermark appears on every page of your document. To back out of the deal, select "No watermark" at the top of the box.

3.3.2. Choosing a Page Color

The Page Color option applies more to Web pages than to printed pages. When you're working with paper, you'll usually print on a different colored paper rather than printing a colored background on white paper. However, with heavy stock, you can use this feature on occasion to create postcards, colored covers, and so on.

When you're creating a Web page in Word (Chapter 4), you can use this feature to add background colors, textures, patterns, and even background picturesnot that it's always a good idea. Nothing screams "Amateur designer!" more than background colors and images that fight with the text on the page. Homespun Web pages are the most flagrant violators of good taste. But whether you're working for screen or paper, if you use a dark text color, make sure you use a light page color and vice versa. Avoid extremely busy background patterns, textures, and images that make it hard to read your text.

Go to Page Layout Page Background Page Color drop-down menu to see a palette of options (Figure 3-8). If you move your mouse over a color (without clicking), then you see the page change color, immediately giving you a preview. In fact, if youre previewing a very dark page color, Word's smart enough to change the text from black to white. That doesn't mean it's impossible to come up with some garish page color options. Click a color to set your page color.

If you don't like the colors on the menu, you can open the Colors box that's used in all the Office programs (Figure 3-9). The Standard tab shows colors arranged as hexagons within a hexagon. Click a color or a gray shade (at the bottom) to make a selection. The Custom tab gives you more control over your color selection. To use it, click the rainbow-colored box on the left, and you get a crosshair cursor to choose a color with. Position the crosshairs on the color in the spectrum you want, and then click the slider on the right to adjust your chosen color's lightness or darkness . Using these two controls, you can select any color your computer can create. As you work with the Colors spectrum and the slider, the New and Current boxes show you a preview of how you're changing the color. This system is easy to use but makes it hard to recreate the same color twice in a row. To do that, you need to color by numberssee the box in Section 3.3.3.

3.3.3. Applying Page Borders

A tasteful, properly applied border can add a certain flare to your document. However, an inappropriate border can make your document look cheesy (Figure 3-10). Enough said.

Okay, now that you've been warned , here's how to add page borders:

1. Choose Page Layout Page Background Page Borders to open the Borders and Shading box (Figure 3-11) .

   The Borders and Shading box has three tabs. Make sure you're using the Page Border tab. (The first Borders tab puts borders around paragraphs, pictures, and other objects on the page.)

2. On the left, choose a setting to define the border .

   Start with the five settings on the left, to define the border in broad strokes ranging from no border to drop shadows. You can select only one of these settings.

3. Choose a line style, color, and width, or choose an art border .

   Decide whether your border will be a line or an art bordertrees, hearts, pieces of cake, and so on. If you're going with a line border, choose a style of line from the drop-down menu. You can choose from more than two dozen lines, including solid, dotted , double, and wavy. Then use the drop-down menus to choose a line color and width.

   Figure 3-9. The Office 2007 Colors box lets you pick colors in two ways. Top: The Standard tab is the easiest to usejust click a color swatch. Bottom: The Custom tab gives you great color control, but requires a couple extra clicks or knowledge of one of two standard color models, RGB or HSL, as the box in Section 3.3.3 explains.

   If you want an art border, select your design from the menu. Note that some of the art styles use different patterns for different sides of the page and for the corner design.

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   Note: Whether you choose lines or art for your border, you can adjust the width. You can increase line widths to a thick 6 points and art widths to 31 points.

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4. Preview the border, and then select the sides of the page that will have borders .

   The Preview on the right side of the Borders and Shading box shows what sides of your page will have borders. Click the borders to toggle them on or off. Using this technique, you can choose to show a border on a single side of the page or on any combination of sides.

   POWER USERS' CLINIC Specifying Colors by Numbers

   When Web designers talk about color, they use a numerical system from 0 to 255, where any color imaginable can be described as a combination of red, green, and blue. A value of 0 means that the color contains none of that hue, with 255 being the maximum amount. These numbers let you describe color with great precision. For example, R197, G216, B255 specifies a particular shade of blue. To create this color in Word's Colors box, type 197 in the Red box, 216 in the Green box, and 255 in the Blue box. This numerical system minimizes the chances for misunderstandings. If you're collaborating on a Web site, the Web designer can give you an RGB color to use for the Web page background and be absolutely certain that you're both talking about the same color. (When you click a color and move the lightness/darkness slider in the Colors box, you're still using the RGB system, but Word fills in the numbers for you.) The other color model used in the Colors box is HSL, which stands for hue, saturation (intensity), and luminosity (brightness). Saturation refers to the amount of the actual color (hue) in the mix, and luminosity determines the amount of white or black mixed in to create degrees of lightness and darkness. Here, too, you can type numbers if you know them, or just use the color spectrum and slider until you've got the color you want.

   Figure 3-10. You can find the Page Borders button in the Page Background group on the Page Layouts tab. Don't get carried away with borders, or you can make bad decisions. This cake border is a bad choice for Marie Antoinette and most other adults.

5. In the lower-right corner of the box, use the "Apply to" control to set the pages that will have borders .

   Maybe you want your first page to have a different border from the rest of the document. If the first page of your document uses letterhead, you may want a first page with no border at all, so select "This sectionall except first page." Or, to put a border around the cover page but no other pages, choose the "This sectionfirst page only" setting. As with paper size and other page layout settings, Word lets you apply borders differently in different sections of your document.

6. Click OK to accept the settings and to close the Borders and Shading box .