Adding a watermark to your Excel document is a great way to protect your confidential information. Placing a watermark on material makes it more difficult for people to appropriate your information for unintended uses, while also legally indicating that the information contained in those pages is the property of your organization. Luckily, adding a watermark to an Excel spreadsheet is not all that difficult.

1. In an Excel spreadsheet, click on the Insert menu > select WordArt. Select a style you like.
2. Type the word you’d like to use as your watermark (e.g., “Confidential”).
3. Make the text transparent by right clicking on your watermark > Format Text Effects > Text Options.
4. In the transparency sliders, adjust the transparency of the image until it’s no longer obstructing information that appears in front of it.

Note: The instructions and video tutorial are for Macs. The PC instructions are the same, but step 3 may look slightly different. After you click Format Text Effects, you can find the transparency sliders in the Text Fill or Text Outline sections.

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.