Why can't I remove a watermark in Word 2003?

"Ah, fixed it!

Go to ""headers/footers"" mode
Select each section in which watermark appears (or first section if they are ""linked"")
Highlight and delete ALL the header (even if no text) - the watermark will disappear
Put back the text you want to appear in the header (if any)
Save the document.

And relax."

"In Word 2010 (and I think Word 2007), there are at least two ways to get a watermark. In the “Page Layout” tab on the ribbon, in the “Page Background” section, you can choose a built-in, plug-in or custom (text or image) watermark with the “Watermark” tool, and there is a “Remove Watermark” entry in its menu. This kind of watermark appears in the normal view (“Print Layout”).

If that's not it, there's another type of watermark. It's set through the “Page Color” button next to “Watermark”; click “Fill Effects” to see the settings. A watermark can be added as a background gradient, pattern, texture or picture. Pictures don't always show in the normal view, only when printing (I don't know when they do or do not, but I never saw that picture after opening the file, only after fiddling with the fill effects settings). You can remove this by selecting “No Color” in the “Page Color” menu.

In the Word document (.docx, which is a zip file), the background stuff is set by a <w:background> node in the file word/document.xml, right after the namespace declaration. For example (newlines added by me):

<w:background w:color=""FFFFFF"">
<v:background id=""