Word 2013 Background

A plethora of tutorials to get you up to speed with Microsoft Word 2013

Backgrounds In Word 2013

There might be some circumstances where you think a background other than the standard plain white would look good. There are several ways that you can change the background in Word 2013 and they are all found in the same place.

Page Color In Word

If you are familiar with Word 2010, you might expect the Page Color command to be found on the Page Layout tab. Wrong! The Page Color command is now on the Design tab in Word 2013. Anyway. Go to the Design tab and click on Page Color button.

Page Color Background In Word

The usual color swatch is displayed, allowing you to set your own background color for the document. Simply hovering over a color will apply a live preview. This is especially helpful if your document is already written, because then you can see how the contrast between text and background looks. You can hover over several colors before you select one, or you can just click away from the panel to close it down without selecting one.

The color gallery we have just seen applies a solid color to the background. However, you can apply more sophisticated effects by clicking on Fill Effects.

Fill Effects In Word

The four tabs allow you to set a:

  • gradient – where one color merges smoothly into another. You set the colours and where they change.
  • texture – there is a gallery of preset textures for you to choose from. Textures are actually images that repeat seamlessly, and if you have one of your own on your computer you can use that.
  • pattern – there is a collection of ready made patterns for you to use. You can even customize the foreground and background colors
  • picture – select a picture from your computer, from office.com Clip Art or from Bing Image Search and then see it displayed in the background of your document.

You can also specify a watermark in your document too: set a watermark in Word 2013.