If the page break is applied in Excel in unwanted places it can be annoying when you take a printout. Knowing how to remove the page break in excel can help you to sort out this issue. Also see: Lio
Page break in Excel
To put it in simple words, Page break acts like a divider in the Excel spreadsheet, where the worksheet breaks into separate pages when the Print command is executed. Two types of page breaks are there in Excel where one is automatically added by Excel and is marked as dashed lines and another is manually added by the user and is marked as solid lines. Based on various settings, the automatic page breaks are added like margin, scale, and paper size for obtaining an optimal number of columns and rows per page. To add manual page breaks, go to Page layout, Breaks, and Insert page break menu.
Removing the page break in Excel
To remove the page break, you must be in the Page break preview. The page breaks can either be horizontal or vertical. The horizontal page break will make a row-wise separation and the vertical page break makes column wise separation. Both these page breaks can be deleted or whichever page break you want in your worksheet can be retained.
To remove the vertical page break, you must select the column that is at the right of the page break. To remove the horizontal page break, you must first select the row which is below the page break, and then from the page layout tab, you must choose Breaks, you will see a list of options, select ‘Remove page break’. The page break can also be removed by dragging to the left or up, past the row headers or column headers. Drag it until the page breaker moves out of the page break view area.
How to return to the normal view from the page break preview
- To return to the normal view once you are done with the page break preview, click on ‘ Normal’ from View Tab. You will find this under the ‘Workbook Views ‘ group.
- The alternative way is to click on the Normal icon from the Excel status bar. The page breaks are still visible in grey color once you go back to normal view. The reason is the page breaks will turn on automatically.
- If you close and then reopen your worksheet without saving it, the lines will be removed.
- If the grey lines are still visible, go to the File tab and click on options. From the various options, select the Advanced category and choose ‘Display options for this worksheet. Then you need to uncheck the box ‘ Show page Breaks’, click on OK and the Excel Options box will be closed and all the grey dotted lines will vanish from the Normal view of your worksheet.
