Create a letterhead in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is great for giving a professional look to letters.

But it can do more than simply adding dates and addresses neatly and printing in an attractive font.

Professionally printed letterhead paper was something of a status symbol when letters were written with a pen or typewriter because of the time and money it cost to create.

Today, Word can be used to add a professional-looking letterhead to every letter you create, at no extra cost.

Better yet, as Word prints the letterhead along with the message itself, there’s no need to keep a stockpile of letterhead paper in a cupboard, and it’s possible to have a choice of several headings: one for personal letters, maybe, and one for professional ones.

In this feature we’ll explain how to create a unique personal letterhead that’ll add some character to your correspondence. We’ve used Word 2003, but similar functions are available in both older and newer versions.

Preparing your view
Before making a start designing the letterhead, it is important to use the best document onscreen view. Word has several different ways of viewing documents and selecting the right one makes preparing a letterhead much easier. Some views may not show any of the letterhead text and graphics at all.

The easiest way to change the views is to use the five small icons in the bottom left-hand corner of the window, next to the horizontal scroll bar. From left to right they are: normal view, web layout view, print layout view, outline view and reading layout.

Left-click on the middle icon to select the print layout view. This shows the document as it will be printed, including the margins. This is important because most printers cannot print right to the edges of a page.

To prevent text being cut off, check the rulers at the top and left of the document. The white part of the ruler shows the inside of the document and the darker parts on either side show the area that text will not enter.

If the margins are too large it’s possible to change them. Click on the File menu, then on Page Setup. The four margins can be adjusted by either entering a new figure in the top text boxes or by clicking on the up and down buttons.

Making the adjustments from this window is safer, as Word will attempt to check them against the printer’s own margins so that nothing will be cut off when the letterhead is printed. Click on OK to save the changes. If you’ve moved the margins too far a warning message will appear – click on Fix to automatically move them back a bit.

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