Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Non-Tiled Background Pictures.
When you add a background picture to an Excel worksheet, the picture is normally "tiled" so that it fills the whole screen, over and over again. For some background images, this is a great effect. For others, it is bothersome. In these cases, you may want to have only a single copy of the background image appear on-screen.
There is no way to do this directly within Excel, however. The only option is the tiling of background images. You can reduce the bothersome effects of the tiling, though, by loading the background image into your favorite graphics editing program and simply increasing the size of the canvas on which the image is located. You should make the canvas the same size as a full sheet of paper, with the actual image centered on the canvas. Save the new image, and use it for your background.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2203) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Non-Tiled Background Pictures.
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2015-07-02 12:10:19
Steve
Image sized at 7x9 stretches to fill every available cell. Very frustrating.
2014-02-05 11:13:13
Pete
Re-sizing the image is fine until you run the spreadsheet on a monitor with a different screen resolution.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: 
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