create faux letterhead for fax and pdf attachments.

Historically, I’ve created faux letterhead to be used when letters were to be sent via fax. More recently, they are used for letters to be sent as PDF attachments via email.

The reasoning behind this is to save money on pre-printed stationary letterhead. Economically, there’s no reason to print a letter on this expensive paper when the recipient will never actually touch it.

First, I re-create the content and format of a client’s pre-printed letterhead using the same fonts and layout as the printed version. The goal is that the recipients of these letters won’t notice a difference between the paper letters they receive from a firm via USPS and the letters they receive from the same firm via fax or email.

This sometimes requires the installation of a few custom fonts and maybe even the use of an old school ruler. In my experience, the process always requires placing the faux letterhead on top of the genuine letterhead and holding them up to the light to see how they line up. (The lightweight paper of the faux letterhead is usually thin enough to see through.)

Very often, the layout extends beyond the standard 1 inch margin usually used in the body of a letter (like the example below), so I usually need to create a section break to allow the document to have two different margins on the same page. Just place your cursor below the last line of the faux letterhead content and insert a continuous section break. Then set your margins as needed in each individual section of the document.

(click to zoom)

Once the document is divided into sections, you may want to protect Section 1 from accidental editing. I’ll tackle that in next month’s tip.

UPDATE: Here’s that tip I promised about protecting a section of your document against editing: “prevent editing in a section of a MS Word template/document“