Can anyone help me create a template for MS Word 2010 from a .PNG file.



Today I found a site that offered free Christmas templates for MS Word and when I saved the file it was saved as a .PNG file. I opened word and the only way I could see how to use the file was to bring it in as a photo and position it so it covered the whole page. That being said, I could not see how to do anything else with it as I could not type text on top of the graphic image. Can anyone explain to me how to go about making this so I can type a multiple page document so that each time I start typing a new page the background image appears and you can type inside the frame of the imported picture. Thanks in advance for any help.

Your error was in saving the source image in PNG format. Since the site claims to have Word templates, that is what you should have downloaded.

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Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Cross-posted at: https://www.office-forums.com/thread...plate.2349787/
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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Otherwise, you could import the graphic into the document's header(s) marked to be behind text. Set your margins to be inside the graphic. Save your document as a template and use that as the basis for your Christmas letters.

Templates in Microsoft Word

Thanks for the reply. I took your advice and imported the image as a header and set it to be in the background. I'm not 100% sure what I ended up doing but I had to adjust the margins on the header and minimize the size of the footer as image needed to go the whole width and length of the printable space on the page. Once I got the footer setup I was then able to go back in and set the margins for the text area on the page and then saved it as a template. After that I simply opened up the template and typed my Christmas letter and when I completed the first page the image popped up on page two as I had hoped that it would. Once the letter was completed, I saved the letter as a standard Word DOCX file. Thanks again for the suggestion.

Just in case someone is searching for the same answer as I was there appears to be a second method to import an image into your document and using it as a background. What I found out was that in Word 2010 you can select the Page Layout tab, then select Watermark and Custom Watermark, next select Picture watermark and select the picture you wish to use as a background. The default Scale is "Auto" and I had to select 100% instead to make it work. So the image prints fully in your document, you'll also have to uncheck the Washout check box.

Once you have the image in your document as a watermark, you can save the document as a template if you wish to use it multiple times or simply continue editing the document if you only need to use it once.

Hope this helps others that may be seeking the same answer I was.