Letterhead Layout in Word???
mara06 (2454 points) | Mon, 2009-12-14 21:08Hi, guys. I need to poke the hive mind here and see what flies out.
My client (a Mac user) wants me (also a Mac user) to create a Word template for him that incorporates the layout for the letterhead I designed for him so he can use it for e-mail attachments.
The design for his letterhead bleeds left and right margins and has the contact info centered along the bottom margin. Right now, it's an Illustrator file. Even saved in .png format for use in Microsoft Office, Word doesn't like this at all and I really don't know if I can force it to do this.
Can you help me figure out how this needs to work, or is it well-known among designers to be a lost cause? Any ideas for how else my client could get the same effect, short of insisting that he use InDesign for his letters and attach them as PDFs?
Mara
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Did you try putting a background image?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/TheJackman/word.png
Then go to the latest tab 'Picture'.
http://jackmancer.com/
http://twitter.com/jackmancer
Thanks! This should work, but it doesn't. When I choose the PNG file, it comes in all bizarre sizes and stuff. But this is closer than I've been yet! I wish to hell I could interest him in using ID instead. He has it. Sometimes I think this is the WORST part of our jobs -- trying to give our clients far less than they've hired us for, because they set their sights too low.
Mara
I've always just pasted a PDF or tiff in the background as suggested by jack, and then made up text boxes on top.
"Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised." - James Thurber
When I do that, Word tries to tile the image (which is 8.5 x 11), creating a bizarre new page shape with partial repetitions of the artwork. Like this:
[image removed]
It's something that happens in Illustrator, I think. It's driving me nuts. Meanwhile, I'm trying to sell him the ID solution. Wish me luck!
And wipe that smile off your face -- this is HELL, missy!
Mara
Perhaps this may work for you Mara:
- In Word go to View>Header and Footer.
- Click in the Header that's revealed & go to Insert>Picture>From File and browse to an EPS (never had any success with PDF's doing this, only EPS's) of your logo. Of course, you'll need to muck around with the positioning. Ditto for the Footer.
- Save as Template
Thanks, I tried that. The header/footer is constrained by the margins set for the document. My letterhead design for this client bleeds left and right. The only way around that is to set the left and right margins to zero, but then that ruins your margins for text. I tried layering a text box over that, but it doesn't work that way. Whatever I give the client has to be pretty easy for him to use, and he's confused by the concept of text boxes, so even if I got that to work, it might not be the best thing for him.
Your idea would be perfect if the logo in question were something that a normal person would dream up, but no. It had to be me.
It'll be real pretty when it's printed (on 100% cotton stock). The stream of water that flows left to right across it will be debossed and hit with gloss varnish. But for now, ARGGGH!
Mara
Hi Mara, you can actually make the header go right to the edges & still control the text margins (I just tested it). You'll need to move the bottom marker on the ruler to the edge of the doc (to control the headers placement) & then set the top marker for the margin on the text.
I'll try this. Thank you!
Edit: This doesn't work for me. The header insists on clinging to the margins set in the document specs. Adjusting the ruler thingies makes no difference.
gRRR!
Edit 32: Okay, I think I did it, but the imported images for the header and footer are grayed-down somewhat. Also, the Header/footer method makes these appear on every page, and my client wants the letterhead look only on the first page, with subsequent pages blank, as you would do with a real letter on paper. I'm going to start drinking soon. I can feel it. ;-0
Mara
What about a washed out vignette to the edges, thus eliminating the zero margin guides of Word and in-office laser printer output settings?
If you want, Mara, I can email you a copy of what I've done for a client in a Word setup with one of my designs...let me know.
"Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised." - James Thurber
Thanks, mama. This design kinda needs to retain 100% of itself right to the edges, or it'll look very odd. He doesn't care about office printouts, only e-mail attachments (which may or may not ever get printed out at the other end -- not really an issue).
He will be printing his letterhead and other stuff in February (and it'll all be gorgeous). This is just for his electronic communications. I really think he needs to use InDesign for this, saved as PDFs; Word .doc attachments are much too easy for some unscrupulous person to edit. For this client, that's a massive concern, or should be. They do have ID and know their way around its basic features.
I'm cold and hungry and cranky so I'm going to go gather up some cats and call it a night. Thanks so much for your help. I might be back for more tomorrow, after my client digests what I sent him earlier.
Is it ART yet?
Mara
I'm sure I've done this before, I'm going to go look in my archives, and if you still need a solution, let us know...
The Construct Agency
Building Creative Brands for People
Thanks, Minty. I haven't heard back from my client yet this morning -- I'm hoping they like the idea of using InDesign-to-PDF instead of Word for this, if only for the added security.
Mara
In response to "Edit 32: Okay, I think I did it, but the imported images for the header and footer are grayed-down somewhat"
I know that you can insert the images as a header or footer, and even though they are grayed out, they will still print and convert to a PDF normally. In case that's an option...
That's nice to know, but my client wants to be able to send letters as Word doc attachments. At least, that was the original idea. The problem with headers/footers is that if you want to do a multipage document, as my client often will, you're stuck with the header/footer on every page. Unless I'm mistaken, of course. I often am, and freely admit this. To me, Word is just not a page layout application. I'm trying to talk my client into letting me set this up for him in InDesign, which he knows how to use about as well as I know Word. (We make quite a pair.)
Thanks very much for providing this info. I really appreciate it.
Mara
I can't solve this particular problem, however I can offer a solution for future problems of this nature. Here's what you do... open up your normal page layout program - Quark, InDesign, whatever you like to use. Create a new document. Take the text tool and using 72pt. Helvetica bold - type this exactly as you read it, word for word: "This business does not use or accept Microsoft Word files". Print it out and tape it to your front door. Works like a charm.
LOL! YES YES YES!
For this otherwise fabulous (and very generous) client, I recently had to "beautify" a PowerPoint presentation that violated every rule of PP Presentations put in place to prevent making their audiences die from either boredom or aggressive hair-pulling.
Now this.
I love you. Marry me and take me away from all this.
Mara
LOL! Well, I could marry you - but unfortunately I'd simply be taking you away to more of the same kind of problems over here.
Ah, that's okay. I kinda like the husband I already have and frankly, I can't afford a good enough lawyer to make the hassle of divorce worth my while. So, we'll meet once in a while at the train station for drinks, okay?
Mara
There ya go. When in doubt, bottoms up.
You're on the right track adding it into the header.
Here's the process I use:
Create the image at around 200ppi in photoshop at full A4 or letter size (whichever is requried) and position your artwork within this space as required.
Save the image as an optimised png to save on file size (word and ppt work well with pngs and even respect full alpha transparency). Photoshop will grumble about the large canvas size, but ignore it.
Drop the png into the header of the word doc. It will likely be much too large (or an odd-size).
Double-click the placed image and choose 'Layout' and 'Behind text'.
You can now position it so that the top left of the image fits the top left of your page.
From here, zoom out and re-scale from the bottom right hand corner so that the the image fits the page correctly (to avoid word's odd click-to-grid functionality hold down alt/option when you scale the image).
You may find that creating multiple pngs and adding some to header, some to footer works better for you (and for file size).
Subsequent pages can have their headers/footers un-linked from the first page by selecting their header (double-click) and, in the headers and footers toolbar clicking the 'Link/Unlink to previous' button.
Phew... Hope that helps.
As a side note, setting your photoshop image to full A4/letter size is purely for positioning later on - you can always crop this to save file size, but make sure the image is full height or width so that you have something to benchmark against when you scale the image.
Wow, Alex. Thank you. That seems like an awful lot to go through, when creating an InDesign template that he can work in and save as a PDF seems so much easier. I did it in, like, two minutes. I'm hoping he'll go for that. If not, you've given me an excellent tutorial here. At least I hope I can do all that you suggest. I have the older (2002) version of Word from the Microsoft Office for Mac package. I think most of you out there are using a much newer version, but I can't afford it -- and I have an inbre aversion to Microsoft products anyway. I'm really hating this project. Again, though, thank you!
Mara
I DID IT!!!
Yay CreativeBits. Yay http://www.microsoft.com/office/community and a few other sites I found, but mostly, yay CreativeBits. Good lord, we rock! :-)
Jeez, how do people STAND using this crap application day in and day out?
Mara