Sometimes, you might have unwanted pages in your document that you would like to delete. For example, you might have separated each page using a page break and you now want to remove an empty page in the middle.
Other times, you don’t want to remove a particular page from your document but want to reduce its size. This is especially useful when you want to print out the document, as having fewer pages would save you time and money.
Google Docs gives you several options for deleting a specific page in your document and reducing its size. In this article, we will be discussing five of these methods:
5 Ways to Delete a Page in Google Docs
- Deleting a page using the Backspace or Delete key on your keyboard
- Removing page breaks
- Using custom spacing
- Reducing your page margins
- Reducing the font size
Note that this guide is for complete beginners so we’re not assuming that you have prior experience with Google Docs.
Let’s get started.
Method 1: Deleting a page using the Backspace or Delete key on your keyboard
The first method we will be discussing is a relatively straightforward one. You can just select an entire page and press the Backspace or Delete key (for Mac users) on your keyboard to get rid of that page.
Below are the steps for this method.
Step 1: Open your Google Docs document.
Firstly, open the Google Docs document containing the page (or pages) that you want to delete. You can do this by going to the Google Docs homepage (docs.google.com) and clicking on the relevant file under ‘Recent documents.’ Make sure that you are signed in to your Google account first.
You could also open an existing document by going to Google Drive (drive.google.com).
Even if you don’t already have a document, you can create a new one by clicking on the plus sign at the top of the screen or by choosing one of the many templates that Google Docs offers.
Step 2: Highlight the page you want to delete and press Backspace or Delete.
Next, highlight the page you want to delete. Make sure to highlight the page you want to delete along with the end of the previous page, like this:
Then, press the Backspace or Delete key on your keyboard. This will eliminate the page from the document.
Make sure that you don’t need the contents on the page before deleting it.
Note that if the page you want to delete is empty, you don’t have to highlight anything. You can just place your cursor on the page and press the Backspace or Delete key.
Method 2: Reducing the number of pages by removing page breaks
You can use this method when you don’t want to delete a specific page in your document and just want to reduce the number of pages.
Before we learn about the steps for this method, here’s a brief introduction to page breaks. Page breaks are used when you want to start a line on a new page. Removing page breaks reduces the number of pages in your document since it reduces the amount of blank space in your document.
For example, this blank space between two pages is eliminated when you remove page breaks:
With that introduction, here are the steps for removing page breaks.
Step 1: Identify where you placed page breaks.
The first step is to know where the page breaks are in your document. Sometimes, the location of page breaks are obvious: if there is a lot of space between one page and the next, they are probably separated by a page break.
However, other times, you have to spend a little more time identifying these breaks. If there isn’t any space between one page and the next, check to see if they are divided by a page break. This is what the first page would look like if there was a page break:
Step 2: Press the Backspace or Delete key on your keyboard to remove the page break.
This is the same as the step we followed in the previous method. To remove the page break, place your cursor at the start of the first word on the page and press the Backspace or Delete key.
If you want to delete the content of the page along with the page, you can simply highlight the entire page and press the Backspace or Delete key twice.
Method 3: Change the spacing of your lines
This is another method of reducing the number of pages in your document. When you reduce the spacing between your lines, the text in your document occupies less space, which reduces the number of pages as well.
Here’s how you can use custom spacing to remove a page in Google Docs.
Step 1: Click on the ‘Format’ tab.
First, click on the ‘Format’ tab at the top left corner of your screen. This will open the Format drop-down menu.
Step 2: Click on the ‘Lines spacing’ option and choose ‘Custom spacing.’
Click or hover on the ‘Lines spacing’ option and choose ‘Custom spacing’ from the drop-down menu that appears.
Step 3: Change the spacing settings.
Next, change the line and paragraph spacing settings in the window. Generally, the default line spacing is 1.15 but you could change it to 1 without seeing a noticeable effect on readability.
The default options for paragraph spacing (both before and after) are generally 0. If they are anything greater than 0, you can reduce them to eliminate extra space.
Method 4: Reducing your margins
Another technique that will reduce the number of pages in your document is reducing the margins. Margins are the distance between your text and the edges of the page. You can reduce the top, bottom, left and right margins to reduce the amount of space the text in your document occupies.
There are two main ways in which you can reduce your margins in Google Docs: using the ‘Page setup’ option or using the ruler.
Here’s how you can reduce margins using the ruler.
Step 1: Go to the ‘View’ tab and click on ‘Show ruler.’
Click on the ‘View’ tab in the top left corner of your screen and select the ‘Show ruler’ option from the drop-down menu. You should now be able to see a horizontal and vertical ruler in your document.
Step 2: Adjust your margins using the ruler.
On the rulers, you should see blue arrows. These represent the location of your margins. You can drag them across the ruler to adjust your margins.
First, press Control + A (or Command + A if you’re using a Mac) to select the entire document. Then, drag the arrows in the correct direction to reduce the margins. If you don’t select your entire document, then the changes to the margins will not apply.
You can also use the Page setup option to adjust the margin size. Below are the steps for doing this.
Step 1: Click on the ‘File’ tab.
The ‘File’ tab is the first tab in your Google Docs toolbar. Click on it.
Step 2: Select the ‘Page setup’ option.
Next, select the ‘Page setup’ option from the drop-down menu that appears.
Step 3: Change the size of the margins.
The default margin size for all four margins (top, bottom, left and right) is 1. You can reduce this to 0.5.
Method 5: Reduce the font size
This is probably the simplest method for reducing the number of pages in your document. By reducing the font size of your text, you will naturally have fewer pages.
Here are the steps.
Step 1: Select the entire document.
Press Control + A (or Command + A for Mac users) to select the entire document.
Step 2: Reduce font size.
You can reduce the font size from the toolbar.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of the article! We have discussed a lot in this article today, so here’s a quick recap of the content.
If you want to delete a particular page in your document, you can simply select the page and press the Backspace or Delete key on the keyboard.
Otherwise, if you want to delete a page by reducing the number of pages in your document, you can remove page breaks or reduce the spacing, margins and font size.
We hope you found this article helpful.