Excel 2010 Tips and Tricks

406 Tip 188: Adding and Removing Page Breaks
Adding and Removing Page Breaks
One way to approach page breaks on printed output is to just let the pages break where they
break. That situation might be acceptable most of the time, but sometimes you need to control
page breaks. This tip describes how.
Normally, Excel handles page breaks automatically. After you print or preview your worksheet,
Excel displays dashed lines to indicate where page breaks occur. Sometimes, however, you want
to force a page break — either vertical or horizontal— so that the worksheet prints the way you
want. For example, if your worksheet consists of several distinct sections, you might want to
print each section on a separate sheet of paper.
Forcing a page break to appear where you want it
To insert a horizontal page break line, move the cell pointer to the cell that will begin the new
page and make sure to place the pointer in column A; if you don’t, you’ll insert a vertical page
break and a horizontal page break. For example, if you want row 14 to be the first row of a new
page, select cell A14. Then choose Page Layout➜Page Setup➜Breaks➜Insert Page Break. Excel
displays a dashed line to indicate the page break.
To insert a vertical page break line, move the cell pointer to the cell that will begin the new page,
but in this case make sure that you place the pointer in row 1. Choose Page Layout➜Page
Setup➜Breaks➜Insert Page Break to create the page break.
Removing page breaks you’ve added
To remove a manual page break, move the cell pointer to the first row beneath (or the first column
to the right of) the manual page break and then choose Page Layout➜Page Setup➜
Breaks➜Remove Page Break. (This command has an effect only when you place the cell pointer
adjacent to a manual page break.)
To remove all manual page breaks in the worksheet, choose Page Layout➜Page Setup➜
Breaks➜Reset All Page Breaks. After you issue this command, the only page breaks that remain
are those that occur naturally.