How To Make An Image A Background In Word

How did we brand a Give-and-take table with a film background for a recent article – asks an Office Watch friend?

She meant this table of Zoom shortcuts for toggling audio and video . In that location's a similar table for Teams shortcuts.

The quick reply is … we cheated! Give-and-take can't have a table with a motion picture background or it'southward then hard and clumsy that it's non worth bothering.

The faster option is to use PowerPoint which tin practise the same job faster and easier. Permit's start with the PowerPoint option.

PowerPoint table with movie

Make a PowerPoint slide with the image as the background for the slide. Insert the table over the slide. Finally take a screen image of the finished production and paste into the Word certificate.

The slide background is controlled by right-clicking then Format Background, select the image to use as a background or there'southward a Clipboard selection as well.

Insert the table into the slide from Insert | Table. Choose the number of rows/columns y'all'll need, though you can change that afterward. Initially the table with have some default formatting with colored cells.

Alternative from Discussion

If you already have the table in a Discussion document, just copy and paste into the PowerPoint slide. So format the cells every bit necessary.

Select all the table cells (or just the ones yous desire transparent) and choose Table Design | Shading | No Fill up.

Now the background image appears in the cells.

The text colour is probably not what you'll need to appear in front end of the picture. In our example the default tabular array text is black which is almost invisible with that image. Fix that by selecting all the table cells and so Home | Font | Font Color and then select a contrasting color (White in this case).

Now nosotros tin see what we're doing, add the text into the cells.

The terminal piece of the PowerPoint puzzle is the table borders. We used Tabular array Layout | Inside Borders with a contrasting color. Whatever edge choice is OK, including No Borders.

All the usual Table options are available on the Tabular array Blueprint and Layout tabs.

PowerPoint does have positioning gridlines which make it easy to center the table. Grab the table and drag around until you encounter the faint red guidelines.

Finally, accept a screenshot of the slide (or simply the table part) to paste into your Discussion document. Insert | Screenshot is in modern Office or whichever screen epitome software you similar.

Earlier you inquire … it is possible to insert a slide from Powerpoint into a Word certificate with Paste Link. That'southward useful if the slide volition exist updated oft. We have a fully working example of that in our book Real Time Excel. For one-off situations, it's faster and easier to just copy a slide image

Word table with picture background

Here's how to do a table with image behind in Word, though nosotros strongly recommend the PowerPoint method which is easier to make and manage.

The way to brand a Word table with picture background is to set up the image to a 'Below Text' layer. The two elements tin can't exist linked so the result is clumsy and probable to go wrong when the document formatting changes.

Then motion the epitome and so information technology's 'under' the table. Resize the image and table equally required.

Word tables can but be in the text layer and can't be grouped with an image. Moving or changing the tabular array means adjusting the background paradigm every bit well.

In one case the image is behind the table information technology's hard to select. Open the selection pane (Layout | Arrange) and click on the paradigm to select.

We renamed the image from 'Pic 1' to something obvious.

Merge or Dissever cells in Give-and-take tables
Word table with Footnotes
Give-and-take tables for formatting magic
AutoFit Table Columns in Give-and-take