How to Remove a Watermark in MS Word That Has Become ...

How to Remove a Watermark in MS Word That Has Become Persistent

Version: MS Word 2007, but will probably work the same for Word 2010. Problem: A custom watermark would not go away using the normal procedure (Page Layout > Watermark > Remove Watermark). The problem began after a crash. I was able to remove the watermark on pre-crash copies of the document using the normal procedure. Unfortunately, the copy I saved after the crash had become corrupted in such a way that the watermark was persistent no matter what I tried. Research: Many of the posts I saw online said that somehow the watermark becomes part of the header. I tried highlighting and deleting the header. That didn't work. I tried highlighting and deleting individual objects in the header and that didn't work either. Somewhere in the header ? in an area that I probably couldn't access ? was one wee pixel that had the encoding. I located it via HTML, but you don't have to; instead you can do the Quick Fix, below. If you are interested you can see the code that causes the problem in the More Explanation section. Quick Fix

1. Open the document and make sure you are positioned in a section that has the watermark.

2. Navigate to Insert > Header and select> Remove Header. Do it this way and not by removing individual

objects.

a. If the watermark disappeared, congratulations.

b. If the watermark did not disappear, navigate to Insert > Footer and select Remove Footer. Now,

it should be gone.

3. Rebuild the header and footer. Do not copy it from corrupted versions or you'll copy the problem back

into the document.

More Explanation Approach: One of the problems in Word is that the user can't see what is going on. I decided to try to get around this regrettable limitation by saving the file as an unfiltered html file and seeing if I could find where the problem was occurring. When viewed the html file in TextPad, the first thing I noticed is that there was a Request for Proposal_files folder in the directory. In it were some XML files, png files, and header.htm. The header file was the place where the problem resided. I opened header.htm and did a search for the word, "DRAFT," the custom watermark I was using. Sure enough, I found it in an "h2" definition block. My html knowledge does not extend to understanding everything in the /div, but I figured that I had found it when I saw the rotation (315 degrees) and the font size of 159.6 pts, a little over 2 inches (144 pts). I backed up the html file and then deleted the block of text that seemed to be causing the problem. I saved the html file and then reopened the Word file, which I had saved as HTML. Then, I resaved the Word HTML file as a DOCX file. The watermark was gone! It sounds more complicated than it was. Here's a summary by extension:

? DOCX file to HTML

? Optional: back up one or both of the files

? Manipulate HTML

? Save HTML file and also do a Save As DOCX

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How to Remove a Watermark in MS Word That Has Become Persistent

? View the DOCX file. The content in this version of the Word DOCX file should be identical to the content the original DOCX file, but without the watermark. Note: You may need to create the header and or footer again.

It turns out that the watermark is generated in VML, a language I never even knew existed. Here's a link to the texpath element as described in the W3 site: . But even without knowing VML, I noticed stuff in the code that told me I was in the right place. The clues are highlighted in red in the code snippet that follows. Here is the code that caused the problem. It is only visible when the document is saved as html:

 

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How to Remove a Watermark in MS Word That Has Become Persistent

Request for Proposal

 

In the Investment Plan doc, I also had to remove the footer html code:

  Page | 2 DRAFT

 

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