Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Controlling Display of Page Breaks.

Controlling Display of Page Breaks

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated July 20, 2019)

4

There are two types of page breaks that can appear in an Excel worksheet: manual or automatic. You insert page breaks manually by using the Breaks tool on the Page Layout tab of the ribbon. Automatic page breaks are those that are calculated by Excel based on various settings, such as page size, margins, cell size, and the like.

Excel allows you to control whether page breaks are displayed on-screen (as dashed lines) by following these steps:

  1. Display the Excel Options dialog box. (In Excel 2007 click the Office button and then click Excel Options. In Excel 2010 or a later version, display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
  2. Click the Advanced option at the left of the dialog box.
  3. Scroll through the available options until you find the Display Options for this Worksheet section. (See Figure 1.)

    4. Figure 1. The Advanced options of the Excel Options dialog box.

  4. Using the drop-down list at the top of the section, indicate which worksheet you want to affect.
  5. Set the Show Page Breaks check box as desired. If selected, then Excel displays page breaks on-screen for the designated worksheet.
  6. Click OK.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (8847) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Office 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Controlling Display of Page Breaks.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is three minus 0?

2019-07-23 22:43:28

rob

If this option is not selected, page breaks will also be displayed on the worksheet (for the session) after doing a print preview.

2019-07-21 11:36:04

Willy Vanhaelen

@Allan
I you have no objection to using macros, you can copy this one to your personal workbook and asign it to a button in the QAT:

Sub TogglePageBreaks()
ActiveSheet.DisplayPageBreaks = Not ActiveSheet.DisplayPageBreaks
End Sub

It has the advantage that you can turn it on and off at a flip of a switch and also quickly remove them after printing.

2019-07-21 07:03:24

Peter Atherton

Allan

Select all the sheet Tabs before following the instructions in the article. I've only done this in a almost blank workbook but is should work. See the figure

(see Figure 1 below)

Figure 1. Page Breaks for multiple pages

2019-07-20 13:16:10

Allan

Unfortunately, must do this separately for each Worksheet. Would be nice if could do this for a whole Workbook.

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