Word document background image not converting to pdf

Problem: Using a background image in a word document, converting to Adobe Acrobat PDF will loose the background image.

I had been looking to empower one of my clients to create better looking literature without having to get us to build all of them in Illustrator. Word templates seemed the way to go, better looking day-to-day business communication and anything more complicated would come to us t design & lay-up.

• Having first tried using the header and footer feature in Word found it too hard to recreate the style, copy & position the logos + only to find logos/colours opaque.
• Then tried using the background image [Page colour >  Fill Effects > Picture (in Office 2007 this is all under the Page Layout tab)] which looked perfect except when converting a document to PDF it lost the background image. No settings I changed seemed to change this, nor using the “print” to PDF on the PC.

Finally the solution:

Add your image as a Watermark, simples.

Word 2007 > Page Layout tab > Watermark >  Custom Watermark > select the picture > untick Washout (This will mean the background image isn’t faded).

If you wish to design a background image to fill an entire word document at 100% scale I would suggest 800 x 1300.