Understanding Page Border Art

If you are using Word 97 or later versions to add page borders to your document, you already know that you can use special artistic treatments for the borders. For instance, you may want the page border to be comprised of a line of apples, stars, candles, or some other object. Word provides a wide array of artwork that you can use for borders.

The artwork used for borders is stored in a proprietary file format. The artwork is not in a normal format, such as GIF, JPG, or TIF. Instead, the artwork is in files that end in .BDR. You can find them on your hard drive by using the Find feature from the Start menu, and searching for any file ending with a .BDR extension. Word includes 15 such files. Typically they are in the \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Borders folder.

Because the border artwork is stored in a proprietary format, you cannot add your own custom artwork for borders, nor can you use any artwork stored in a different format for borders.