How To Remove Page 1 Watermark In Excel

Do you want to get rid of that annoying watermark on your worksheet? We’re here to help with that.

This tutorial is about removing watermarks from your Excel spreadsheets. But for that, what is a watermark in the first place?

Here’s what a watermark looks like. And you must have been through the annoying times when it was added uninvited to your sheets.

How to remove it? This tutorial covers a variety of methods and how to do that. So make sure you’re tuned in till the end.

Remove the Page Watermark by Changing the View Settings

One main reason why you’d see the Page 1 watermark on your spreadsheet is the Page Break View.

Under the page break view, Excel divides the spreadsheet into pages as they will be printed. Each page is bordered with a blue dotted line and has a Page number watermarked on it.

If that’s the reason for the page break watermark appearing on your sheet, it’s really easy to have this watermark removed.

All you need to do is change the view settings, and the watermark will go away.

Follow the steps below to remove the Page Break preview (and the Page 1 watermark) from your spreadsheet.

1. Go to the View tab.
2. Go to Workbook Views > Normal Preview button.

You’d see the current view would be set to Page Break Preview. We are setting it to Normal.

Your spreadsheet will exhibit a normal view. No more blue borders and no page watermarks.

Another way how you can change the view settings for your spreadsheet is here.

3. Go to the bottom left of your spreadsheet to find these three buttons.

These are three-page view buttons that help you quickly toggle between different view settings.

4. Click on the Normal View button (as shown below) to get rid of the Page Break Preview and the page watermark.

The Page Break Preview mode will be changed to Normal View mode, and no more watermarks will appear. How cool is that?

Remove the Page Watermark by Deleting the Background

The above method discussed how you can remove the “Page” watermark when the watermark is only coming as a result of view mode.

In essence, there doesn’t exist a watermark on your sheet.

However, often this is not the case. What you see as the watermark might be the background of your sheet that looks like the one below.

In this case, to get rid of the Page watermark, you must delete the background. Follow the steps below to delete the background from your sheet.

1. Go to the Page Layout tab > Page Setup group.

2. Click on the Delete Background button, as shown above.

And whoosh! There’s not any “Page” watermark in sight on your sheet now.

TIP!!

You might be tempted to select the “Page” text on the sheet by simply clicking on it and hitting the Backspace button. However, it won’t work like that. Doing so, you’ll only end up selecting the cells on the front.

Delete the Watermark from the Page Header

Sometimes, you might end up seeing the “Page 1” watermark on your spreadsheet when it’s applied as the page header.

The page header would appear at the top right of your spreadsheet and it will look something the watermark below.

To get rid of this watermark, you must remove it from the header. Let’s see how to do it below

1. Move to the top of your sheet (more precisely the page).
2. Double clicking on the top will activate the Header as follows:
3. The header will likely have three boxes, click on the third box. The third box might be containing the text &[Picture].

4. Erase the text &[Picture] (using the backspace key).
5. Hit Enter.

Doing this, the watermark from the page header will be removed from the sheet instantly.

That wasn’t difficult, was it? Try it yourself now!

Otherwise, you can remove the page header (along with the footer).

Delete the Watermark from Word Art

Does the watermark on your spreadsheet look like the one below:

That’s not what we call a watermark essentially; it’s Word Art that you can do in Office programs.

Nevertheless, if the “page 1” watermark on your sheet looks like this, you must delete the WordArt from your sheet to get rid of it as deleting the entire sheet isn’t feasible.

Follow the steps below to remove it from your worksheet.

1. Right-click on the “Page 1” watermark.
2. Upon selection, it would be enclosed in a rectangular dotted box, as shown below.

3. Click on the borders of the box to select the entire textbox.
4. Once the text box is selected, the dotted borders will turn into simple borders, as shown below.

5. Press the Delete key or the Backspace key to delete it.

And it’s gone. Pretty easy, no?

TIP!

Watermarks added through WordArt can take any form. They don't necessarily have to read as "Page 1". No matter what text is added through WordArt; you can always delete these watermarks by following the steps above.

Conclusion

In the guide above, we’ve discussed a variety of methods to remove the “Page 1” watermark from Excel.

The watermark is often useful given the fact that it breaks down your spreadsheet into pages and how they will be printed. However, it can be very frustrating otherwise. If you don’t need it there in your sheet, it is a pain to the eyes.

But no more! Whether it is a watermark, a background, or a header, you now know how to get rid of it. Try the methods demonstrated above to practice deleting watermarks from your Excel spreadsheet.