Watermarks in Excel? Step-by-step Guide to Remove with Tips

Microsoft Excel is essential for business reports and data analysis, but unwanted watermarks can make your spreadsheets look unprofessional. Whether they're accidental additions or copyright markers, removing watermarks in Excel is crucial for clean, presentable documents.

Depending on the application, it provides a variety of benefits like clear ownership information. In this article, you can learn 4 efficient ways to quickly remove watermarks from Excel sheets.

Part 1. How to Remove Different Types of Watermarks in Excel

Since Excel does not include a watermark feature, the watermark is there when you insert images or text into headers and footers as well as when you set the background picture. So, there are 4 ways to help you remove watermarks in Excel with different scenarios.

1. Removing Page 1 Watermark

As for the Page 1 watermark in Excel, these are not actual watermarks but Excel’s page layout indicators. Although it will not be printed, it’s still annoying when you check the documents on computer.

Steps: On the View tab, there's three icons, including Normal, Page Break Preview, and Page Layout. Just click Normal in the bottom-right corner and the watermark in Excel will go away.

2. Removing Header/Footer Watermark

Many companies add logos or "Confidential" watermarks in headers/footers for branding or security. These kinds of watermarks in Excel will appear in every page when printing. You can follow the detailed steps below to remove them:

Step 1Go to the Page Layout tab. And then click dialog launcher to open Page Setup.

Step 2Navigate to Header / Footer. It's usually a custom header. And you'll see that word "&[Picture]" or "&[Company Logo]" somewhere. Just delete that.

Step 3And now when you do Print Preview, the watermark in Excel is gone. If you're seeing a watermark but it's not there when you print.

3. Delete Background Watermarks in Excel

You may accidently insert an image as a sheet background, and it tiles across the entire sheet. What’s more, some older Excel versions used backgrounds for watermarks. Here you can learn how to remove those watermarks in Excel:

Steps: Go to Page Layout tab from the top menu. Click Delete Background to remove the image watermark in Excel. Alternatively, you can also replace it with a new background if needed.

Part 2. How to Remove Image Watermark Before Inserting to Excel

However, the methods showed above can only turn off the watermark embedded in the spreadsheets or just remove the background watermark in Excel once and for all. What if you want to remove the watermark from the background image and thus keeping a background image still in the spreadsheet to make it look fancier or more professional?

Then you could try the AVAide Watermark Remover with intelligent algorithm to remove the watermark in Excel effectively by analyzing the surrounding pixels. The latest version has a good capability and could work on multiple formats like PNG, JPG, JPEG, etc. Not to mention it is free to use. You could just try on the website.

Step 1Go to AVAide Watermark Remover. You will see an uploading area where you could drag and drop the Excel picture you want to remove the watermark from.

Step 2Then in the image, mark out the area of the watermark with different tools. Then click Remove to delete the desired watermark in Excel.

Step 3It will automatically remove the watermark. If you're satisfied, you can click Save to download it.

Part 3. Pro Tips and Tricks for Removing Excel Watermarks

1. Use the right method

To remove the watermarks in Excel easily, you have to understand why the watermark is there at the first place. In Excel, watermarks are often used to indicate the document's status. Like it could show whether it's a draft or maybe a confidential document. Moreover, the page watermarks could help identify which page of the document you are on. They can also be used to highlight the brands to increase brand recognition.

So, make sure you check which type of watermark it is and don't mix up the different types of watermarks and choose the wrong method. Ensure that you edit the correct header and footer or delete the background image when you want to erase a watermark in Excel.

2. Remember to save

In order to make sure that the watermark in Excel is completely deleted, always save your changes and check the print preview before you print them. And of course, don't accidentally delete the important data in the sheet or.

3. Use VBA if the normal method doesn't work

If the above methods didn't work and you are good at programming, then you can try using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). If you have basic knowledge of VBA programming. You could try these codes below to remove watermarks in Excel.

Sub RemoveWatermark()

Dim wSheet As Worksheet

For Each wSheet In Worksheets

With wSheet.PageSetup

.CenterHeader = “”

.RightHeader = “”

.LeftHeader = “”

.CenterFooter = “”

.RightFooter = “”

End With

Next wSheet

End Sub

Part 4. FAQs about Watermarks in Excel

How to insert a watermark to Excel?

Click on the Insert tab and go to the Text section and click on the Header & Footer icon. Click on the Picture icon to insert pictures as watermarks.

How to quickly remove multiple blank or empty rows in Excel?

You can remove blank rows by selecting the range from which you wish to remove them. Then select Go To Special and Check the Blanks. After that, go to the Home tab and select Delete > Delete Sheet Rows from the Cells group.

How to remove duplicates in Excel?

Select Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values.Then filter out these values and delete them. Or you could select Data > Remove Duplicates, which could help directly remove the duplicates.

By Jane Pineda on Aug 08, 2025