How to hide page breaks in active sheet or all sheets in Excel?
When working in Excel, using page breaks is a common way to fine-tune the areas to be printed. After adjusting the print area, Excel shows page breaks as black dotted lines in your worksheet when you return to Normal view. While these indicators help you visualize print sections, they can sometimes clutter your workspace and create visual distractions, especially if you are no longer actively formatting for printing. For many users, hiding these page break lines is essential for a cleaner, more focused worksheet display. This article presents practical methods to quickly hide the page breaks from your worksheet after you switch back to Normal view, so you can concentrate better on your data management or analysis tasks without unnecessary visual interference.
- Hide all page breaks in active worksheet in Excel
- Hide all page breaks in active worksheet or all worksheets with Kutools for Excel
- Hide page breaks using VBA code
Hide all page breaks in active worksheet in Excel
Normally, Excel will automatically hide all page breaks when you close and reopen a workbook. But often, you may need to instantly hide page breaks in the current worksheet without restarting Excel. To accomplish this, you can simply adjust the Show Page Breaks option within the Excel Options dialog. This manual adjustment offers immediate control over the visibility of page breaks, beneficial for working uninterrupted in the current session.
1. Click File > Options.
2. In the Excel Options dialog, click the Advanced category on the left. Then, under the Display options for this worksheet section, uncheck the Show page breaks option. See screenshot:
3. Click the OK button to apply the setting and close the dialog.
Returning to your worksheet, all page breaks will be hidden instantly and the dotted lines will no longer appear. This can greatly improve worksheet readability during editing and regular data entry.
Tips: This method only applies to the currently active worksheet or the worksheet you specify in the Excel Options dialog box. To apply it to multiple sheets, you will need to repeat these steps for each sheet individually.
Easily insert page break after every x rows in Excel
Inserting a single page break is relatively straightforward, but if your workflow requires inserting page breaks after specific recurring intervals—for example, after every 2 rows—manually repeating the process can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Kutools for Excel's Insert Page Break Every Row utility offers an efficient solution by enabling you to automatically add page breaks after every desired number of rows with just a few clicks.
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Hide page breaks with Kutools for Excel
Kutools for Excel offers a convenient View Options tool that lets you quickly toggle many of Excel's display features, including showing or hiding page breaks. This utility saves time by streamlining several display settings in one dialog box, making visibility management across worksheets fast and user-friendly whether you are working with individual sheets or entire workbooks.
1. Click Kutools > Show / Hide > View Options. See screenshot:
2. In the View Options dialog box, uncheck the Page breaks option under the Window options section. To hide page breaks in all worksheets, use the Apply to all sheets button before clicking Ok. To hide page breaks only in the active worksheet, simply click OK button. See screenshot:
Additionally, the View Options utility allows you to reveal or hide several other display elements such as Formula Bar, Status Bar, Inner Tabs, Sheet Tabs, Gridlines, vertical and horizontal scrollbars, and more. This comprehensive control helps you maintain your preferred workspace environment with minimal effort. For more detail information about View Options...
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Hide page breaks using VBA code
For users who want more automation or wish to hide page breaks across multiple worksheets in a single step, using a VBA macro is a practical solution. This approach is ideal if you routinely handle large workbooks or need to ensure page breaks are hidden in all sheets with a single action. The macro allows you to programmatically control the visibility of page breaks either for the active worksheet or for all worksheets in the workbook, without manually accessing Excel’s dialog boxes or going through each sheet individually.
1. Open the Excel workbook where you want to hide page breaks. Navigate to Developer Tools > Visual Basic to launch the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window. In the VBA editor, click Insert > Module, then paste the code below into the new module.
To hide page breaks in the active worksheet only:
Sub HidePageBreaksActiveSheet()
On Error Resume Next
Dim ws As Worksheet
Set ws = ActiveSheet
ws.DisplayPageBreaks = False
End SubTo run the macro, press F5 in the VBA editor or use Alt+F8 from the Excel worksheet, select HidePageBreaksActiveSheet, and click Run. This will instantly hide the page breaks in your currently active worksheet.
If you wish to hide page breaks in all worksheets in the workbook, paste and run the following code instead:
Sub HidePageBreaksAllSheets()
Dim ws As Worksheet
For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
ws.DisplayPageBreaks = False
Next ws
End SubThis macro will loop through every worksheet in your active workbook and hide the page breaks simultaneously. Remember to save your workbook as a macro-enabled file (*.xlsm) to retain your VBA code.
This VBA approach offers a fast and flexible way to globally control page break display, especially helpful for workbooks with many sheets, or as part of automated reporting workflows. If you prefer not to use VBA, consider the Kutools solution above for no-code, one-click control.
Demo: hide page breaks in active sheet or all sheets in Excel
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