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Insert a signature picture into a Word document

There are some nifty tricks to inserting a picture of your signature into a Word or other document. Tips that make the result look realistic and professional.

We’ve already explained the many ways to get a picture of your ink signature into Office.

Now you have a picture of your signature, it’s ready to be inserted into any document or letter. Again, there’s the simple options and then there’s little tricks we like to share with Office Watch readers.

See All the ways to sign a digital document in Word and more about your choices for getting a good, clear picture of your signature onto your computer.

Making ‘handwritten’ letters with Word

Insert normally

Drop the signature image into the letter in any of the usual ways. Insert | Illustrations | Pictures and select the image file.  Or copy the image from another Office document.

Insert the image where the signature should go.

Tight signature cropping

This is where the tight image cropping we recommended comes in handy.  The image can be placed into the document neatly between the typed lines. Here’s another example with plenty of space around the image.

You can crop the image in place but, believe us, it’s a lot easier if the image is cropped in the first place.

A more realistic signature

Would you like the signature to look more realistic?  Try these tricks.

Firstly, allow for more positioning options by changing the Layout Options to ‘Behind Text’

(We can hear some of you ready to email us about ‘Behind Text’ so before you write.  Yes, you could choose ‘In front of text’ but only if the signature image has a transparent background. Transparent backgrounds are a topic for another day.)

With the Text Wrapping changed you can tinker with the look in many ways.

Change the line sizes between the two text lines so it looks like the ‘ink’ has written over the text.

Or maybe rotate the image a little so it looks signed at a slight angle.

All the ways to sign a digital document in Word and more

Making ‘handwritten’ letters with Word

Signatures for all occasions in Outlook

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