Well there's several ways of doing this:

1) Design in design program of your choice then send to a printer. Then in your traditional word processor, set-up margins to correctly use the pre-printed letterhead. Put the pre-printed letterhead into your printer and print.
Pros: Can get full bleed (edge to edge printing) look which will set it apart from most business printed documents.
Cons: Costs more to do, requires some user intervention (add the correct paper to printer before printing)

2) Create a design (using whatever design application) and then create a template in your word processor, and place your designed artwork as a background in your word processor template. Be aware of your printer margins and design for them (the white margins where the printer can't print).
Pros: Cheaper and it's easier for less technically proficient staff to use
Cons: Hassle of setting up your Word processor template and getting the artwork in and looking right, no full-bleed, can look generic without the full bleed.

Evie,

Most of my clients are small or non-profit so I usually end up making them a letterhead in inDesign first, for proofing and because inDesign doesn't suck, and then I transfer all the graphics into a word document.

Even if you do a print letterhead you will have to specify margins, as MS Word default margins are too small. In which case you may like to create a word template with the margins set so the client's writing doesn't print right over the art.

You can get even more fancy by setting up header styles and body copy styles in word -- which your client will promptly ignore.

This link has an accurate and easy to understand tutorial on the subject:

http://www.creativepro.com/article/hergeekness-says-convert-custom-lette...

One drawback is when you place the art in word it automatically greys out when the client is using it to write. This is because the art must be stuck in the footer, regardless of where on the page it sits, so that it is not accidentally moved around.

Then the client asks, "Please make it not grey."

And it goes on from there.

Hi tmac

The "Please make it not grey" issue is what i'm having right now... What is your solution for this?

• What is the best way to do this... I’m guessing an InDesign template is out of the questions so the most popular text editor for the office guys is still “Word”. Does this mean that I would need to create the entire layout in Word... margins... etc or is there another way to do this? To be honest I’ve never actually did a layout in Word really :/.

Dear Evie/Carolina,

What would be wrong with creating the template in Word? It’s not rocket science. I’ve been doing that for many years. MS Word has all design tools you need. You only have to recognize, and to use it as yet another design tool. In many ways it is less complex and sophisticated than QuarkXPress or InDesign, but it is one very reliable program that allows you to fine-tune your typography to an appropriate degree: paragraph and character styles, font sizes to 0.5 pt., leading to 0.05 pt., tracking to 0.05 pt., horizontal scale to 1%… just don’t forget to enable kerning (it’s not automatic in Word). To a certain extent using Word after InDesign feels like driving a stick-shift car after an automatic. Yes, it’s not for the sissies…

One tip: in Document… > Layout set up the Headers and Footers as ‘Different first page’. That would let you use your company’s head-piece on the first page, and the continuation page headers and automatic folios on the subsequent pages.

If you place the letterhead art -- the logo, etc -- into the Word file itself, you'll get inferior results because they'll be printed on office printers that have nowhere near the quality that you'd get if they were professionally printed letterheads.

The logo will shift color depending on which printer is being used, and if toner levels are low the logo might print in the wrong color entirely.

Much better from a quality standpoint to design the letterheads in InDesign, have them professionally printed, and then create a Word template for typing the letter's content.

renkceurb,

Hi. I don't have a solution for not making it grey. Well I guess I have a solution, which is to explain to the client/user that it will appear grey and there's no way around it.

If they are sending out the letterheads over the internet I explain the process of print to PDF (then the art is full colour, or fully black rather than tinted back).

They should allow header view in MS Word, because this does come up a lot.

And very few of my clients will ever print stationery. In fact, it seems they are all swinging as far away from print as they can -- but I bet they will correct their behavior over the next year or two (ie: a balance of communication methods).