Letterhead Header Height Word: A Geometry-First Fix
Most letterhead problems in Word are geometry problems wearing a disguise. The logo looks too low. The body text crowds the artwork. Print the document and a sliver of the header gets clipped. None of those are design problems. They are all measurement problems, and they have measurement solutions.
This guide treats letterhead header height in Word as exactly what it is: a number in points or inches that has to match the physical space your logo occupies. Get those two numbers to agree and the layout is done.
Why Header Height Is a Separate Setting From Your Logo Size
Word stores two completely different things when you put artwork in a header.
The first is the image itself. It has a height in points, pixels, or inches, depending on where you look. That height describes how tall the artwork is as an object on the page.
The second is the header's distance-from-edge setting. That setting tells Word where the top of the header region sits relative to the top edge of the paper. It does not automatically expand to contain your logo. Word will let the logo overflow the header region, overlap the body, or sit somewhere that looks fine on screen but clips on a real printer.
These two measurements are independent. Fixing one does nothing to the other. This is the core geometry problem.
It is also why copy-pasting a logo into a header and hoping for the best rarely works. If you want to understand why that approach fails at a structural level, Convert PDF Letterhead to Word: Why Copy-Paste Fails covers the mechanics in detail.
The fix is always the same: measure the logo first, then set the header distance to match, then push the body text down to clear the artwork. In that order.
How to Measure Your Logo's True Height Before Touching Word
You need one number before you open Word: the height of your logo or header artwork in inches.
If you have the original design file, your designer can give you this directly. Ask for the height of the artwork area in inches, not pixels. Pixels depend on resolution and will give you the wrong number for print.
If you are working from a PDF letterhead, open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Click on the logo image. The Properties or cursor-position readout will give you coordinates in points (1 inch = 72 points). If you see the logo runs from roughly the top of the page down to the 1.5-inch mark, that is your target height: 1.5 inches.
If you only have a flattened image file (PNG or JPEG), open it in any image editor that shows physical dimensions. Switch the unit to inches, not pixels. Read the height at 300 DPI for print-quality artwork. A logo that is 450 pixels tall at 300 DPI is 1.5 inches tall.
Write that number down. Everything else is arithmetic.
A note on artwork that bleeds to the page edge: if your logo or decorative bar runs all the way to the top of the paper with no white margin, the header distance-from-edge value should be 0 or very close to it, and you will handle the body offset separately. If the artwork has a built-in top margin, subtract that margin from the total height before setting your Word value.
Setting the Header Distance-From-Edge Value in Word
Open your document and go to Layout (or Page Layout on older versions) > Margins > Custom Margins. In the dialog, look at the Layout tab. You will see a field labeled "Header" under the "From edge" section. This is the distance from the top of the paper to the top of the header region.
Set this value to match the letterhead header height in Word. If your logo is 1.5 inches tall, type 1.5" here. If it is 1.25 inches, type 1.25".
Do not confuse this with the Top margin setting on the Margins tab. The top margin is the distance from the paper edge to where body text begins. The header distance-from-edge is separate. You will set both, and they need to relate to each other correctly, which is covered in the next section.
After setting the header distance, double-click into the header region and insert your logo image. With the image selected, go to Picture Format > Size and confirm the image height matches your target measurement. If Word scaled the image during insertion, correct it manually. Lock the aspect ratio, type the exact height, and let Word calculate the width.
For a broader look at how the header region interacts with page geometry, Letterhead Google Docs vs Word: Header Architecture explains how Word's approach differs from other tools and why the distance-from-edge setting exists in the first place.
Adjusting Body Text Position So It Doesn't Overlap or Float
Once the header distance is set and the logo is correctly sized inside it, you need to confirm that body text starts below the artwork, not inside it or too far below it.
The top margin controls this. Go back to Layout > Margins. The Top margin should be at least equal to the header distance-from-edge value. If your header distance is 1.5 inches, the top margin should be 1.5 inches or slightly more.
"Slightly more" means adding a small buffer, typically 0.1 to 0.2 inches, so that body text does not sit immediately against the bottom edge of the logo. Most professional letterheads show 0.1 to 0.25 inches of white space between the logo and the first line of body text. A top margin of 1.65 inches with a header distance of 1.5 inches produces that gap cleanly.
Check the result in Print Preview (File > Print). The first line of the body text area should sit visibly below the logo, with consistent white space. If text overlaps the artwork, increase the top margin. If there is too much empty space between the logo and the text, reduce the top margin slightly.
One related issue worth checking: if your letterhead has a footer with a firm address or telephone number, the same arithmetic applies at the bottom of the page. The footer distance-from-edge should match the height of any bottom artwork, and the bottom margin should clear it. Word Page Margins for Letterhead: Stop Printer Clipping goes through the full top-and-bottom margin relationship in detail.
Testing for Printer Clipping Before You Share the Template
Screen rendering lies. Word may show your logo perfectly positioned while a physical printer clips the top quarter-inch of the artwork because the printer's non-printable zone extends further than Word's margin settings assume.
Test before you share the template. Print one page to the actual printer the office uses. Hold it up to the light against a blank sheet of paper to check whether artwork runs to the physical edge. Look specifically at the top and sides.
If the top of the logo is clipping, increase the header distance-from-edge by 0.1 inches and reprint. Most laser printers require at least 0.25 inches of clear space from the physical paper edge to avoid clipping. Some require 0.5 inches. Inkjet printers vary widely.
Also print to PDF using the system PDF printer (not a physical printer) and open the PDF to inspect it. PDF output reflects exactly what Word calculated. If the PDF looks correct but the physical print clips, the issue is the printer's hardware margin, not your Word settings.
If the artwork is designed to bleed to the edge, the design itself may need adjustment. That is a conversation with the designer, not a Word settings change. Letterhead Lab handles conversion of existing letterhead artwork into Word templates, but the artwork geometry has to be physically printable before conversion produces a usable result.
When Manual Sizing Becomes the Wrong Tool for the Job
Manual measurement works well when you have clean, single-image artwork with known dimensions. It becomes unreliable in a few situations.
If the letterhead has multiple elements at different heights (a logo in the top-left, a colored bar across the top, a firm name in a separate position), you are not measuring one height, you are measuring the bounding box of a composition. Errors compound.
If the PDF letterhead is a vector file with layers, measuring by eye or by cursor position gives you approximate numbers, not exact ones. The header distance-from-edge field accepts values to two decimal places, but estimation rarely gets you closer than one decimal place.
If the letterhead needs to work on both US Letter and A4 paper, the header heights need separate templates. The page geometry is different enough that a single set of margin values will not produce consistent results on both paper sizes.
In those cases, a conversion service that extracts the artwork programmatically and places it at the correct coordinates is more reliable than manual measurement. The letterhead to word template tool at Letterhead Lab does exactly that: it reads the design geometry, lifts the artwork into the header and footer regions, and sets the margin values to match, without you having to calculate anything. The PDF never leaves your browser. Preview is free, and you pay $39 only when you download.
If you are working from a PDF and want to understand what the conversion process actually does to the file before committing, PDF Letterhead to Word: What Happens During Conversion walks through it step by step.