How to create a letterhead in Word (8 steps)

These steps work in Word for Microsoft 365, Word 2021, Word 2019 and Word for Mac. The header tools have been in the same place for years. Where the Mac menus differ, the difference is noted.

What to put on a letterhead

Decide what goes on the letterhead before you open Word. A letterhead carries the details a reader needs to know who wrote to them and how to reply. Nothing more.

• Name: your business, firm or personal name. This is the largest element.
• Logo or monogram, if you have one. Use a PNG with a transparent background, at least 1,000 pixels wide, so it stays sharp when printed.
• Postal address on one line if it fits.
• Phone, email and website. Pick the ones people should use, not all of them.
• Legal or registration line, where it applies: company number, bar or licence number, a nonprofit's EIN, a VAT number. It usually sits in the footer.
• Optional: a short tagline, or a thin rule under the header.

Two fonts at most (one for the name, one for everything else) and one or two colours. That restraint is what makes a letterhead look designed rather than decorated.

How to create a letterhead in Word, step by step

1. Open Word and start a blank document (File → New → Blank document).
2. Set the page size under Layout → Size: Letter for North America, A4 almost everywhere else.
3. Set the margins under Layout → Margins → Custom Margins: top 1.75", bottom 1", left and right 0.75". The deep top margin leaves room for the letterhead.
4. Open the header with Insert → Header → Blank, or double-click the top of the page.
5. Type your business or personal name at 18–22pt, then your address, phone and email on one line beneath it at 9–10pt in a muted gray.
6. Add your logo with Insert → Pictures → This Device, set Wrap Text to In Front of Text, and resize it from a corner handle so the proportions hold.
7. Optionally add a footer with Insert → Footer → Blank (a thin rule, your website or a registration number), then close the header and footer.
8. Save it with File → Save As → Word Template (.dotx), so every new letter opens as a fresh copy and the master is never overwritten.

That is the whole job. The sections below explain each step, the layout choices that make the result look right, and what to do if you would rather start from a template or already have a designed letterhead.

Step 1–3: set up the page

Set the page size before anything else. A letterhead laid out on A4 and printed on US Letter (or the other way round) ends up with shifted margins and artwork creeping toward an edge. US Letter is 8.5 × 11 inches and is used in North America. A4 is 210 × 297 mm and is used almost everywhere else. If you write to both, keep two files: a US Letter letterhead and an A4 letterhead.

Then set custom margins. The top margin is what reserves space for the letterhead: a header about 1.5" tall needs a top margin of about 1.75", so the first line of the letter starts below it. Side margins of 0.75"–1" are standard.

Step 4–5: build the header with your name and address

Everything in Word's header repeats on every page and cannot be knocked out of place by the letter typed below. That is why the letterhead goes there and not in the body. Open it with Insert → Header → Blank (on a Mac, Insert → Header → Blank as well), or double-click the top of the page.

Type your name, press Enter, and type the contact line. Pick one of three layouts:

• Centred. Name and contact line centred (Home → Center, or Ctrl+E / ⌘E). Traditional; suits law firms, family offices and personal letterhead.
• Left-aligned. Logo on the left, name beside it, contact line under the name. Modern and the easiest to keep tidy.
• Split. Name and logo on the left, address stacked on the right. Build it with a two-column table: Insert → Table → 2×1, type into each cell, right-align the right cell, then remove the borders with Table Design → Borders → No Border. A borderless table holds the two sides in line far better than tabs or spaces.

For type, set the name at 18–22pt and the contact line at 9–10pt in a muted gray, with a centred dot (·) between items: 12 Harbor Street · Boston, MA 02110 · (617) 555-0100 · hello@example.com. Use fonts every recipient has (Garamond, Georgia, Calibri, Arial, Helvetica on a Mac). An unusual font that is not installed on the reader's machine gets silently replaced. Keep the contrast between name and contact line deliberate. A header where everything is the same size reads as undesigned.

To add a thin line under the header, click in the contact line and use Home → Borders → Bottom Border. Don't draw a line with Insert → Shapes. A drawn line floats and drifts; a paragraph border stays attached to the text.

Step 6: add your logo

With the cursor in the header, choose Insert → Pictures → This Device (on a Mac, Insert → Pictures → Picture from File) and pick the logo file. Then:

1. Click the logo, open Wrap Text (the Layout Options button beside the image) and choose In Front of Text, so you can drag it freely without pushing the text around.
2. Resize it from a corner handle so it keeps its proportions. About 0.75"–1" tall is right for most headers.
3. In Picture Format → Wrap Text, tick Fix Position on Page, so it does not move when the header text changes.
4. Right-click → View Alt Text and describe it ("Acme LLP logo"). Alt text travels with the file and keeps letters accessible.

If the logo looks soft, the file is too small. Export it again at a larger size rather than stretching it. Scaling a letterhead logo in Word covers sizes and resolution in detail.

Step 7: add a footer (optional)

Insert → Footer → Blank. A footer is where the legal line, the website or a second office address goes, set small (8–9pt). It is optional; plenty of good letterheads have no footer at all. If you add one, make sure the bottom margin clears it, the same way the top margin clears the header. When you are done, click Close Header and Footer or double-click the body.

Step 8: save it as a template

File → Save As, then change the file type to Word Template (*.dotx). On Windows, Word suggests the Custom Office Templates folder in Documents. Keep that location, because templates saved there appear under File → New → Personal. On a Mac, use File → Save as Template; it then shows up under File → New from Template.

From then on, opening the template gives you a fresh, untitled letter on your letterhead, and the master file is never touched. To send a letter by email, write it, then use File → Save As → PDF (or File → Export → Create PDF/XPS) so the recipient sees exactly what you see.

Letterhead only on the first page

Formal letters usually carry the full letterhead on page one only. Pages two onward have no header at all, or a slim continuation header: the name, the date and a page number. Word does this with one setting:

1. Double-click the header to open it.
2. In the Header & Footer tab, tick Different First Page.
3. Page one keeps your letterhead. The header on page two is now separate. Leave it empty, or type the continuation line there.

The full walk-through is in letterhead on the first page only. If you need a lighter header on later pages rather than none, see letterhead on the second page in Word.

Or start from a Word letterhead template

Word ships with ready-made letterhead designs. Go to File → New, type letterhead in the search box, pick a design and click Create. Replace the placeholder name, address and logo, then save the result as a .dotx as in step 8. Microsoft's free designs are also online at create.microsoft.com.

This is the fastest route if you have no brand of your own yet. Two things to know. Many of these templates put the design in text boxes and shapes in the body of the page rather than in the header. That works for a one-page letter but drifts as soon as the letter runs long. Before you rely on one, type a two-page test letter and check that the design stays put. And thousands of other people use the same designs, so the result will not look like yours. Word letterhead templates vs converting your own weighs that trade-off.

Already have a letterhead image or a designed PDF?

Then don't rebuild it. Retyping a designer's letterhead in Word gives you a worse copy and takes an afternoon.

If you have an image (PNG or JPG) of the letterhead: open the header, insert the image with Insert → Pictures, set Wrap Text to Behind Text, size it to the page width, and set the top margin so the letter starts below it. Use artwork exported at 300 DPI or it will print soft. How to add a letterhead to a Word document has the full walk-through.

If you have a PDF from a designer or printer: don't run it through a generic PDF-to-Word converter. It tries to make every element editable, so the logo is rebuilt in a guessed font and the address block splinters into overlapping text boxes. The right result keeps the artwork as artwork in the header and footer and leaves only the letter body editable. You can do that by hand (crop the PDF, export the header as an image, insert it as above; see inserting a PDF into a Word header), which takes 30–45 minutes. Or you can use Letterhead Lab's converter, which does it in about a minute in your browser. The PDF is never uploaded. The preview is free; a Single page is $19 and the Multi-page bundle is $49 for up to 10 pages, including the .dotx, A4 and US Letter versions.

Turn an existing Word document into letterhead

If you already have a letter written and want it on your letterhead, you don't need to retype anything:

• You have a letterhead template: open it (File → New → Personal), then paste the letter's text into the body. Use Paste → Keep Text Only if the formatting fights the template.
• You have letterhead in another document: open that document's header, select everything in it (Ctrl+A / ⌘A while the header is open) and copy. Then open your letter's header and paste. Check the top margin afterwards.

The mistakes that break most Word letterheads

Almost every letterhead that "keeps moving" traces back to one of these:

• Logo and address typed in the body instead of the header. They will not repeat on page two and they shift when the text reflows. Move them into the header.
• Images not anchored. Without Fix Position on Page, the logo drifts as the header changes. Why a Word letterhead keeps moving shows how to pin it.
• Top margin smaller than the header. The first line of the letter collides with the letterhead. Make the margin deeper than the header.
• Page size that doesn't match the paper. Letter artwork on A4 paper, or the reverse, prints off-centre.
• A shared .docx instead of a .dotx. Sooner or later someone types a letter into the master and saves it.
• An embedded PDF object in the header. It only renders where Acrobat is installed and breaks when forwarded. Use an image.

Format rules that make it look right

• Margins: top 1.75" (deeper than the header), bottom 1", sides 0.75"–1".
• Header from Top: about 0.5", under Header & Footer → Position. This plus the height of the letterhead must stay under the top margin.
• Type: name 18–22pt, contact line 9–10pt, letter body 11–12pt.
• Spacing: use 8–10pt space after paragraphs instead of blank lines, and single or 1.15 line spacing.

Exact measurements for every element are in letterhead format in Word, and what Word can and cannot do typographically is in letterhead design in Word.

.docx or .dotx: which to save

A .docx is an ordinary document: open it, edit it, save it, and your changes go back into that file. That is fine when one person drafts every letter, and it is the most portable format if you also open the letterhead in Google Docs or Pages.

A .dotx is a template: opening it creates a new untitled copy, so the master is never overwritten. Use it whenever more than one person writes on the letterhead. .dotx vs .docx for letterheads covers the differences in full.

Sharing the letterhead with a team

1. One person (operations, an assistant or IT) builds or converts the letterhead once.
2. Save it as a .dotx in one shared place: a network drive, a SharePoint library, or each person's Custom Office Templates folder.
3. Everyone starts letters from that template, so nobody rebuilds or edits the master.
4. When the letterhead changes (a rebrand, a new address), the same person replaces the template. Letters already sent are untouched.

This is how law firms keep every associate on the current letterhead, and how a family office hands one template to the principals.

Frequently asked questions

How do I create a letterhead in Word?

Set a 1.75" top margin, open the header (Insert → Header → Blank), type your name at 18–22pt and your contact details on one line beneath it at 9–10pt, insert your logo with Wrap Text set to In Front of Text, add an optional footer, then save the file as a Word Template (.dotx). Everything in the header repeats on every page.

How can I design a letterhead in Microsoft Word?

Design it inside the header. Choose a centred, left-aligned or split layout, set your name at 18–22pt and the contact line at 9–10pt in gray, keep to two fonts and one or two colours, and add a thin bottom border under the contact line. A borderless two-column table keeps a split layout aligned.

How can I create a simple letterhead design?

Use just your name, one contact line and a thin rule. Centre the name in the header in a classic font such as Garamond or Georgia, put the address, phone and email on one small gray line beneath it separated by centred dots, and add a bottom border. No logo is needed for a clean result.

What is the proper format for a letterhead?

Name at the top in the largest type, then the address, phone, email and website on one or two smaller lines, with the logo beside or above the name. Legal or registration details go in the footer. Keep to two fonts and one or two colours, and leave a top margin deep enough that the letter starts below the letterhead.

How do I make a letterhead appear only on the first page in Word?

Double-click the header, then tick Different First Page in the Header & Footer tab. Page one keeps the letterhead and the header on page two onward becomes separate. Leave it blank or add a short continuation line with the name and page number.

Can I make a letterhead in Word for free?

Yes. Everything in this guide uses features built into Word, and Word's own letterhead templates (File → New, search "letterhead") are free. You only need a paid tool if you already have a designed PDF letterhead and want it converted into Word without rebuilding it.

How do I save my letterhead as a template in Word?

File → Save As, and choose Word Template (*.dotx) as the file type, saved in the Custom Office Templates folder. It then appears under File → New → Personal. On a Mac, use File → Save as Template and open it from File → New from Template.

How do I convert a Word document into letterhead?

Open your letterhead template and paste the document's text into the body, or copy the header from a document that already has the letterhead and paste it into your document's header. Either way the letterhead must end up in the header, not the body.

Should I build a letterhead in Word or convert a PDF?

Build it in Word if you have no designed letterhead. If a designer or printer already gave you a PDF, convert it so the design is kept exactly. Rebuilding a designed letterhead by hand takes far longer and almost always looks worse than the original.

Do US Letter and A4 letterheads need separate files?

Yes. The Word page size must match the paper it is printed on. Keep a US Letter version for North American correspondence and an A4 version for everywhere else.