Mhlewis,

Please do continue to contribute. We have all been wrong about one or another feature of Word. It is a huge program and I doubt that anyone at Microsoft fully understands it, or how we use it. MS does its best to hide from ordinary users the fact that a "Watermark" is simply a graphic in a header or footer. This dates back to the days when WordPerfect was the market leader and MS was scrambling to add features to match those in WP. MS's watermark is a flawed thing because it is a part of the header/footer, or it is more flexible, depending on how you look at it. To see a real train wreck, look into another feature that Microsoft introduced into Word to match WP and which has the potential to wreck careers - the Master Document "feature" which can corrupt documents that are not even open. More than one thesis has been trashed on the eve of presentation by this.

Like you, I've come across old threads in a Google search. Sometimes, if I think I have something to add, I will.

It is important though, if you have a new question or a variation on an old one that you start a new thread, possibly with a link to the old one. The reason for that is the people who respond to these threads often disregard new posts in threads that have been marked as Answered or Solved, especially when they are older. This is a reasonable use of their (volunteer) time.

In this situation, your very reasonable assumption was mistaken. That is how urban myths about Word get started or keep going. The design of good letterhead in Word has not been very well addressed by Microsoft. It is not addressed in any of the books on Word that I have read.

You probably caught Paul on an off moment. He is incredibly knowledgeable and helpful. I would especially urge you to look at his pinned articles in the Word part of Woody's Windows Secrets Lounge. They are some of the most authoritative resources on these Word issues. I have bookmarked them and regularly download them when they are updated because I find them to be such valuable resources.