Late last year Google finally added a built-in option for adding watermarks to Google Documents. Unfortunately, that option only allowed you to use images as watermarks and the implementation of those watermarks was a bit clunky. Thankfully, last week Google added a new option for using text as the watermark in Google Documents. 

The new text-based watermark option in Google Docs will let you write things like “draft,” “confidential,” or anything else and apply it as the watermark to your document. What’s also notable about this new option is that the watermark will stay with the document even if you export as  PDF or Word file. 

Watch this short video to see a demonstration of the two ways that you can now add watermarks to Google Documents. 

Applications for Education

My first thought when seeing this update was that special education teachers can now easily put a big “confidential” reminder on documents like IEPs before printing or emailing them to people who need to see them. Speaking of printing, remember that you can disable the option for collaborators to print and or download Google Documents that you share with them.