But say you want to prevent the image from repeating or make it stick to the canvas and not scroll with the text? Wherever you look, the options are numbered. There are none.
Fortunately, inserting a picture into an existing email is not the only way to get a background for your messages. Outlook also understands stationery, and with stationery, the options are endless. We can, for example, make a background image fixed.
Add a Fixed Background Image to Emails in Outlook 2003
To add a background image to a message in Outlook that does not scroll with the text but is fixed to the canvas:
- Download the following file to your stationery folder: zfixedbgimg.htm.
- Open the file in Notepad.
- Replace ###path to background image file### with the path to the desired background image.
- The like could read <BODY background="C:\Documents and Settings\lsdoe\My Documents\My Pictures\background.jpg" style="background-attachment:fixed;">, for example.
- Save the file in Notepad.
- In Outlook, select Actions | New Mail Message Using | More Stationery... from the menu.
- Highlight zfixedbgimg.
- Of course, you can change the file name when saving in Notepad. If you do, the stationery will appear under that name in the list.
- Click OK.
Further Formatting of Your Background
Of course, you can further customize the display of your background image by adding styles the the style attribute of the BODY tag. Set
- background-repeat to repeat, repeat-x, repeat-y or no-repeat to change how the image is repeated or
- background-position to something like top center, bottom right, a pixelated position (0 0 or 10 20) or a position expressed in percent like 15%.
Unfortunately, this way of fixing a background image does not work in Outlook 2007.
