How To Add A Watermark In Google Docs

If you’re writing a document in Google Docs, you might want to add a watermark behind the text. And if you do want to add a watermark to your Google Doc, this is the article for you, because today, that’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do.

If you go looking through all the Google docs menus trying to find an “Insert watermark” option, you, unfortunately, won’t find one because Google Docs actually doesn’t have a dedicated feature for adding a watermark.

But luckily there is a fairly easy workaround using Google Drawings that allows you to add a watermark to your Google doc, so in this article, that’s what I’m going to show you how to do.

Prefer to watch a video about how to add a watermark in Google Docs? Click here.

How To Insert A Watermark In Google Docs

The first step in this workaround process is to create a new Google Drawing by going to https://docs.google.com/drawings/u/0/create.

Now you’ll need to give your drawing a name by clicking on “Untitled drawing” in the top left-hand corner and typing whatever you want to name it.

To make things easy, it’s best to just name it something like (Name Of Document) Watermark so that you know it’s the watermark your going to use for this document.

Now that that’s taken care of, you’ll need to change the size and shape of the drawing so that it fits perfectly into your Google Doc. To do this, click on “File” in the top left-hand corner.

And then click on “Page setup” near the bottom of the menu that appears.

Then, in the box that pops up, click on the drop-down arrow next to “Standard 4:3”.

And then choose “Custom” from the menu.

And now you will be able to set the dimensions. If your Google Doc is the default shape and size with the default margins, you’ll need to set the dimensions of your drawing to 6.5 X 9 Inches in order for it to fit correctly.

I haven’t changed the settings in my Google Doc so mine is the standard shape. And if yours is standard as well, you can just type 6.5 into the first box and 9 into the second box and click apply.

But if you have changed the settings of your Google Doc, you’ll need to go back to your document to work out what size you’ll need to make your drawing. To do this, open your Google doc and click “File” in the top left-hand corner.

And then click on “Page setup” in the menu that appears.

Now you’ll need to work out what shape to make your drawing based on the dimensions you see here. Under “Paper size”, you’ll see the page dimensions of your Google Doc, but as your Google drawing is going to go within the margins of the document, you’ll need to subtract a bit to allow for the margins.

For example, if you take a look at my doc:

You’ll see that as mine is just set to default, the page size is 8.5 X 11 inches, but there is also a 1-inch margin around all four edges of the page meaning the drawing needs to be 6.5 X 9 Inches.

But if your document was (for example) 11 X 17 inches and had a 2-inch margin around all four edges, you’d need to make your drawing 7 X 13 inches.

Once you’ve figured out what shape your drawing needs to be, just go back to your drawing, type in the numbers, click apply, and it should now be all ready to go.

Now you can begin designing your watermark. I can’t really tell you exactly how to do this because it is really up to you and how you want it to look, but I’ll show you how to use some of the main features so that you get the idea.

If you want to add text to your watermark, click on the “T” icon in the menu across the top of the page.

And then click and drag on the drawing to create a text box, and type your text inside it. Once you’ve typed your text, you can change the font, color, size, etc just like you can in Google Docs.

One thing you should keep in mind is that as your watermark is going to be underneath the main text of your document, you’ll want to avoid using any dark colors in your watermark or else the text on top will become quite hard to read.

For best results, I’d recommend making the watermark text a light grey so that it almost fades away into the background.

You can also add an image like a logo if you want. To do this, click on the image icon in the top menu.

Then click on “Upload from computer” and choose the image you want to use.

Once it’s uploaded, it will probably be covering most of your drawing.

But don’t worry, you can just click and drag from any of the corners of the image to adjust it to the right size.

But when you add images to your watermark, you will encounter the same problem as when you add text. If the image is too dark or has too much detail, it will be very hard to read the text that’s over the top of it.

The way to fix this is by making the image slightly transparent so that it starts to fade into the background. To do that, click on the image so that it’s selected, and then click on “Format options” in the menu across the top of the screen.

Then, in the panel that appears, click on “Adjustments”.

Now if you slide the transparency slider about halfway along, your image will fade into the background quite nicely and make it much easier to read the text.

I’m not going to put any more effort into my watermark because it’s just a demo, but you can keep adding things like this and making tweaks until you’re happy with it.

Then, once you’re happy with your watermark, you’ll need to take all the text from your Google Doc out of the document and put it into the Google Drawing. To do this, go back to your Google doc and highlight all the text inside it.

Then cut the text out of the Google Doc by pressing ctrl + X  on your keyboard on a Windows computer or a Chromebook, or pressing Command + X On a Mac.

Now all the text will be removed from your Google Doc which will probably be quite alarming.

But don’t worry, just go back into your Google Drawing and create a new text box that covers the entire thing…

And then press ctrl + V  on your keyboard on a Windows computer or a Chromebook, or Command + V On a Mac to paste all the text into the text box.

And now all the text from your Google Doc will be on top of your watermark in your Google Drawing.

Now, to move all of this into Google Docs, go back to your Google doc and click “Insert” in the top menu.

Then, hover over “Drawing”, and click “From Drive”.

Then, a box will appear on the screen with all your Google Drawings. It will be sorted by date so if you have other drawings, your watermark should be at the top of the list. And you just need to double click on it to select it.

Now you will get to choose between “Link to source” or “Insert unlinked”. Link to source will probably be the best option for this scenario as it will make it much easier for you to go back and edit it in the future if you ever need to.

So just go ahead and click “Insert” to insert the drawing into the document.

Now all your text will be back in the Google Doc, but it will now have your watermark behind it!

How To Edit The Watermark

If you ever want to go back and make any changes to your watermark or your text, you can do that fairly easily by clicking on the watermark in Google Docs so that it’s selected, and then clicking on the drop-down arrow in the top right-hand corner.

Then, in the menu that appears, click on “Open source” to open the Google Drawing in Google Drawings. Now you can make any changes you want to the watermark or the text.

Then when you’re done, go back to your Google Doc, refresh the page, click on the watermark again, and you will now see an “UPDATE” button in the top right-hand corner of the document. Click on “UPDATE” and your watermark and text will update to reflect all the changes you made.

And that’s all there is to it. It’s quite a workaround, and it would be a lot easier if there was just an option to simply add a watermark, but if you need to add a watermark in Google Docs, this method does get the job done.